SOC SCI EXAM 2 – ANTHROPOLOGY
Business/ economic institution
LECTURE
 Anthropology
- Study of man
- Study of the ways human beings
behave in many different parts of the
world and at many different times
throughout history
- *understanding yourself and others
- 2 Types:
1. Physical – biological evolution of
man, heredity
2. Cultural – traditions, norms, how
people behave in different
societies; how people in
different societies live and the
effects their environment have
on their lifestyle
 Cultural Antrhopology
- Culture
- “cultured” – inclined to literary stuff
- Fiestas
- Subcultures
 Different ways Anthropology may study
culture of different societies:
1. Immersion – live with the different
people
2. Reading/researches, audio-visual
materials
3. Artifacts (archaeology) – physical
remains of a past civilization. Ex:
books, literature, paintings, films, etc
 Archaeology is the method of research to
study artifacts
 Culture – the entire way a society lives and
is organized. It includes the following: ideas,
customs, values, norms, social institutions,
attitudes, music, art, language, technology,
and traditions of society
 5 Social Institutions:
1. School/ educational institution
2. Church/ religion institution
3. Government/ political institution
4.
5. Family
 These social institutions are not the same in
different societies. Ex: nuclear, patriarchal,
matriarchal kinds of families
 There is socialization in every culture
 Socialization is the process by which culture
is learned by every person born into that
society
 Traits that make up culture: customs,
etiquettes in formal setting
 Ethnocentrism
 Aculturation
- The process of making the traits of
other cultures a part of your own
 Culture is dynamic
- Change from inside or outside the
society
- Culture changes through:
1. invention
2. diffusion – occurs when ideas
from other cultures are spread;
acculturation follows after diffusion
 3 parts of culture
1. Material
- Includes all the things the society
makes and uses for survival and
enjoyment
2. Norms
- Rules of behavior
- 3 types:
a. folkways (customs) - approved
way of doing something politely or
with good judgment in any society
b. mores – very serious rules of
conduct like taboos
c. laws – norm established and
enforced by the government for
the smooth running of society
3. Technology and values
- Technology is the knowledge of
how to make/ perform things
 - Values include belief and
attitudes
 Some cultures fit together in a meaningful
way
- Culture patterns: a set of cultural
traits which are constantly
repeated in a society
READINGS
1. CULTURE AS ADAPTATION
 Inroduction
- Culture in terms of adaptation and
culture change from an evolutionary
perspective
- Adaptation in man is the process by
which he makes effective use for
productive ends of the energy
potential in his habitat
- Muscular is the most elementary
source of energy
- whenever people introduce a new
energy system into their habitats, their
organizations of social relations or
institutions also change
- an important factor in the organization
of social relations of different societies
is the extent to which extrapersonal
energy (animals, chemicals, steam,
electricity) replaces muscular energy
- a culture must be first defined in terms
of specific sources of energy and their
social correlates
- a culture includes both technology and
the institutions appropriate to that
technology
- a culture can be defined as the
artifacts, institutions, ideologies, and
the total range of customary behaviors
with which the society is equipped for
the exploitation of the energy
potentials of its particular habitat.
 Adaptation and freedom from
habitational limitations
- adaptation refers to the success,
measured by the ability of
populations to survive and
reproduce
- Evolution occurs because no
adaptationis permanent because no
habitat remains unchanged
- Adaptation in man refers to the
ability to make use of energy
potentials in the physical habitat
- Element in the degrees in which
freedom is achieved:
1.) nature of diet over an annual
period – the ability of the members
of a society to subsist on essentially
the same diet during the entire year
2.) the ability of members of a
group to make substitutions in their
diet – freedom is minimal among
nomadic hunters and gatherers
3.) reliance on domesticates – wild-
growing foods and animals are
important only as luxury items and
objects of sport
4.) knowledge about cause and
effect in nature – simple insights can
cause radical transformations in
man’s relationships
5.) the greater the mastery over
nature the smaller the element of
fortuitiousness in social life –
certainty
6.) increasing freedom from
seasonal variation in his cultural
behavior – strong correspondence
between lower levels of
sociotechnological adaptation and
seasonal cultural variation due to an
adaptive fragmentation of groups
  The Dynamics of Cultural Evolution and
the unit of Adaptation
- 3 other sources of evolution in
addition to technological
innovation:
1. contract between groups and the
resulting dissemination of
information and techniques
2. population growth
3. political innovations
- Diffusion or borrowing: spread of
cultural elements from one group
to another
- Specializations to hierarchy to
centralization
- Decision-making and
implementation are central
features of every adaptation
- Unit of adaptation in evolution of
human culture as the largest and
most inclusive group that makes
and implements decisions with
respect to the exploitation of
energy potentials in the habitat
- Nomadic hunters : band
Cultivators : kinsmen or community
Pastoralists : tribe or tribal segment
Industrial workers : state
- One of the consequence of the
succession of levels of adaptation is
that the individual has decreasing
access to the decision-making and
implementing mechanisms of his
society
 A Taxonomy of Cultural Adaptations
1.) Hunting and Gathering (foraging)
- First level of cultural adaptation
- Foraging is a technique of
extracting a livelihoodfrom the
environment by an almost
exclusive reliance on muscular
energy
- Various degree
- Nomadic and sedentary
2.) Horticulture
- Second strategy of adaptation
- A technology in which a people
plant seeds, roots, or tubers
and harvest he product, using a
hoe or digging stick as their
principal means of production
- Horticulturists are responsible
for the presence of food on
which they subsists
- Neolithic revolution as the
development of horticulture
- Stages:
a. first stage – its domesticated
food constitute approximately
10% of the diet ; weak and
amorphous political
organization
b. second stage – cultigens
constitute at least one-third of
the diet; fixed settlements ;
division of labor
c. third stage – domesticates
make up approximately two-
thirds of the total diet ; density
of population increases slightly ;
political organization increases
in complexity
d. fourth stage – domesticates
make up approximately 85% of
the diet ; villages are more
compact and densely
populated; varied and complex
political organization
3.) Pastoralism
- Third strategy
- Depend largely on habitational
circumstances
- Essential social element:
transhumance, a settlement
pattern in which herders
 seasonally drive their animals
from lowland areas of permanent
villages and fields to highland
pastures
- Based on the mutual dependency
of man and domesticated animals
- Cultivation is a secondary source
of food,15%
4.) Agriculture
- Fourth strategy
- A system of cultivation that is
based on one or more of the ff:
plows and draft animals, large-
scale and centrally controlled
irrigation networks, and
terracing
5.) Industrialism
-
Fifth and last stage
-
As much a unique social
organization as it is a
technology
- Difficulties:
a. the system is a relatively new
level of development in cultural
evolution
b. we do not have systematic,
empirical studies of industrial
cultures as such
 Political Institutions and Technological
Development
- State society: a society, in
which a single person, by
whatsoever name he may be
distinguished, is entrusted with
the execution of the laws, the
management of the revenue,
and the command of army
- Stateless society: one in which
the checks, balances, and
controls over behavior that are
among the prerequisites of all
social life are exercised through
local institutions at the
community level, without the
intervention of
supracommunity centers of
authority ; local autonomies:
economic self-sufficiency, self-
protection
 Cultural Adaptation and Cultural
Adjustments as Aspects of Evolution
- Cultural adaptation: major
alterations in the relationship of
societies to their habitats that
result in different levels of
adaptation, from foraging to
industrialism
- Cultural adjustment: refers to
the “homeostatic” changes that
occur within a society at a given
level of adaptation; these
changes result in a better fit or
articulation between the
group’s technology and its
institutions, ideologies, and
customary behavior
- Cultural evolution: the
successive strategies in the
organization of social relations
by which people make use of
harnessed energies
2. WHAT IS LANGUAGE
 Phonology: sound system of the
language
 Semantics: ways in which sounds and
meanings are related
 Linguistic competence – knowledge
 Linguistic performance – behavior
 Grammar represents the linguistic
knowledge or capacity of its speakers