ANT 1AB3 Lecture Notes

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Anthropology- Lecture- Notes
Introduction to Anthropology: Identity Race and Power (McMaster University)
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ANTHROPOLOGY LECTURE NOTES

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September 5th, 2018

What is Anthropology?
Study of human cultures, past and present.
 Study of human cultures, past and present.
 They explore similarities and differences in cultures and why these
similarities/differences exist
There are different types of anthropology, depending upon what you are interested in
(example: archaeology for past cultures or cultural anthropology for present societies).
Anthropologists study all aspects of humanity, religion or worldview, technology, politics,
economics, arts, family structures, etc.
September 10th, 2018

What is Anthropology?
 Anthropos= ‘humankind’
 Logia= study of
 The systematic study of humankind in all times and places.
Extracting Ancient DNA
 Hendrick Poinar (McMaster Anthropology) – ancient DNA; disease in the past; evolution
of disease; sequencing genome of the Black Death
Mummies
 Dr. Andrew Wade (McMaster) is running The Mummipedia project, studying and
analyzing mummies.
Margaret Lock-organ transplants
 Cultural Anthropologist
 Wrote “Twice Dead: Organ Transplants and Reinvention of Death”.
 North American – organ transplants are legal; mind/body split
 Japan – transplants are rarely performed
Social Sciences
Anthropology, Geography, Sociology, Psychology – all study people. What makes anthropology
unique or different from these disciplines?
1) Methods – Long term fieldwork-excavation (archaeologists and physical
anthropologists) or living/interacting with people for a year or more (cultural or
linguistics).
2) Interest in prehistory- anthropologists have the ability to not only study present-day
cultures but prehistoric peoples as well.
3) Commitment to holism
 interdisciplinary perspective (working together with other specialists) to get a
more “complete” picture of a culture;
 exploring all integrated aspects of a society.
Anthropology is Comparative
 Study both past and present people.
 We tend to use different methods or means.

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 Long term field work, 1 full time year in the year.

 Do participant observation or excavating (archaeologist) extracting dna.
 Use surveys and questionnaires and spend a year or more participating In daily
activities, following them around helping them in daily activities.
 Problem with quick survey: get distracted make up numbers, not think.
 Studying past cultures without written documentation prior to 5000 years ago.
 People interested in prehistory is archaeologist. Trying to learn from the objects ppl
leave behind
 aspects: economy, others.
 Interested in origin and how things change over time.
 How things changed
 Interested in human similarities and differences.
 Anthro is holistic, comparative and historical
The Four Subfields of Anthropology
 Physical/Biological Anthropology
 Archaeology
 Cultural anthropology
 Linguistics
 Applied Anthropology
Cultural anthropology
 The study of contemporary cultures and societies
 Culture is defined as transmitted, learned behaviour
 Methodology: participant observation, interviews.
 Ethnography: a description of an aspect of culture within a society.
 Study temporary cultures. Example: Margaret lock going to japan and talking to patients
and docs about transplants. Looking at any aspect called culture. Things passed from
one generation to the next gen. study. Religion, politics and food and tourism in
different cultures or societies.
Methodology: how they do it
 participant observation, example: marine biology; talk to people and interview them.
Ethnography: book of summarizing research. A response to your particular research question.
Archaeology: The study of past societies and their cultures using material remains (example:
tools, ceramics, sites)
Material remains: what people leave behind
Site: Location where people do research
What we can learn about their past, tech clothing materials.
Linguistic Anthropology
 Studies the construction and use of language by human societies.
 Descriptive linguistics: how language works
 Sociolinguistics: the relationship between language and social behaviour.
 Historical Linguistics: how are languages related to each other? How have they
changed?
 study of past and present languages

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Different types of linguistics:

 Descriptive: how language works, why do some language make use of gender language.
Looking at mechanics of language. Where are the verbs, nouns?
 Sociolinguist: how language shaped identity. And how languages gendered in ways and
used by genders in society.
Example: use of color. Use different vocab for colors.
 men say purple, light purple, dark purple. Women say violet, lavender.
 Look at class: how class affects how you talk. In Britain, there is diversity of accents.
 What your class background is. If you from upper class they have distinct way of
speaking (royal family)
 Under class: Private and public schools.
 Factors of language: class gender, race, etc.
Historical linguistics:
 looking at origin and development of language over time.
 How long change over time.
 Where certain words come from.
 Etymology (origin) of certain words, how they change over time.
 Also look at new vocab.
 Our language change due to internet.
 How is language changing due to social media? texting
Example of a sociolinguistic: Paul Manning,

Anthropologist Paul Manning
Linguist going into coffee store, things they look for will be, pricing, look at how you greeted by
cashier. Starbucks have different names for size. Starbucks menu and individualization
represent upper class.
Physical/Biological Anthropology
 Studies all aspects of the biology and behaviour of the human species (and our closest
relatives), past and present.
 Interested in biology behaviour in humans and closest relatives.
Not only study humans but also primates, gorillas, ancestors, orangutan
Types of Physical/Biological Anthropology
Primatology
 Jane Goodall is a physical anthropologist (primatologist).
 Studied chimp behaviour in Gombe Park, Tanzania.
 Jane Goodall: famous in 1960
 Went to live in Tanzania and studying and writing about chimpanzee behaviour and
behaviour of non-human primates. What human like behaviours are natural or not
natural.

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Forensic anthropology: research who study human bone. Identifying people who are missing or
in the past. Work with legal system to identify missing person. Determine age sex.
 A type of physics/biology anthropology
 Anthropologists who deal with deals bodies and try to find the identity of the person
(e.g.name, sex ancestry, what did they die of)
 Soft tissue, skin, bone, organs preserved to identify.
 They work in crime scene investigation or work as consultants in police depts.
 They can determine who’s bones they are.
 Anthropology & the law
 Accidental death, crime scene, investigation, human rights, investigations.
 These anthropologists get called by government bodies (e.g. UN).
 Work in odditorium situations.
 Find graves of missing individuals
 Famous Dr. Sue black work with soft tissue and bone. She’s working on grainy images of
security cameras in crime investigations and catch pedophiles. By focusing on skin.
Paleoanthropology
 Study of the human fossil record
 Another biological anthropology
 Study human evolution.
 Study Fossil remains of ancient humans or human fossils.
 Study in Asia or Europe.
 Where they originate? How they change over time?
 When and Where do we see the first evidence for humans?
Applied Anthropology
 Use anthropology to solve real world problems
 Examples:
 Marketing and Business (e.g. Silicon Valley, hire anthropologist, talk to users of diff gen
of iPhones, to see demographically where they are buying the product. Compare in
gender, particular socio-economic demographic. And how to increase sales and sell to
wider demographic.
 Famous McCracken, cooperate anthropologist, team with other anthropologists. Gets
hired by companies to go out and do research on diff products. Ask anthropologists to
see why it isn’t selling in this area (taste? Not their taste).
 Law-e.g. Indigenous land claims- help with land claims (archaeologists do this, they
excavate regions of Canada.)
 Environmental assessments- if government want to build damn, anthropologists who
worked in that community and knows history, will ask how this damn effect natural
resources, jobs, environment and livelihood.
Anthropology & Culture
All anthropologists study CULTURE
 Definition: “System of meanings about the nature of experience that are shared by a
people and passed on from one generation to another, including the meanings that
people give to things, events, activities and people.

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 We all have universal experiences (life, death) and experience it differently depending
on meaning in our culture. Some cultures think of death as a sad and traumatic
phenomenon.
 We all have similar experiences (life, death, etc.) but we experience them differently
and attribute different meanings to them.
So culture…
 Is shared/universal: every person past present future, belong to a specific culture

tradition.
 Is learned (via enculturation: process of learning about culture.) and is NOT
biological/innate or not what you’re born with.
 Can make particular groups of people distinctive: different manners of speaking,
clothing, dressing diff symbols.
 Provides a common code of contact: gives a sense of cohesion, unity, belonging. Very
positive and sociopsychological functions to people
 Attributes meanings: viewed as symbolic behaviour (clothing, etc)
 Chairs, within the cultural context of educational settings, have particular cultural
meanings. In traditional western settings, chairs in schools:
 Are utilitarian- often not stylish or “pretty”; cheap fabric/material
 Often have desks attached
 Are an “instrument of control”
Example:
 Chairs, within the cultural context of educational settings have particular cultural
meanings. In traditional Western settings, chairs in schools:
 Are utilitarian-often not stylish or “pretty”
 Often have desks attached
 Are an “instrumental of control”: create a discipline body.
 The function of the chair is for you to sit and learn.
So what do we learn about our culture from studying how we use chairs?
 We live in a culture that values attentive bodies (think about how supposedly
“inattentive” bodies are medicalized- example: ADHD) and we manipulate objects and
space to enforce this.
 Can you think of any examples of how the value placed on “attention” is enforced?
 We live in society that values and rewards people for paying attention.
 If body is attentive, mind will also be attentive
 Medicalize bodies (ADHD) perceived to be undisciplined. Socially problematic bodies.
 Use of space by body is formed by culture.
 Examples: places of worship. When someone says, “hey have you seen that?”
linguistically getting attention. Social media
How do we make sense of other people’s behaviours?
 Ethnocentrism: the tendency to judge the beliefs of one culture from your own
perspective.
 Example: Religion and missionary activity.
 Ethnocentrism: being judgy.

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 Judging people from your perspective.

 Your own sense of politics. Racism.
 Missionaries (convert indigenous people to Christianity. And weren’t treated as
humans.
 Acculturation happens (colonialism: less rebellion in the old days).
Cultural relativism
 Understanding another culture from its own perspective.
 But, at times, can be morally problematic! -we do not want to condone horrific acts of
violence, genocide, human suffering, inequality, torture, etc.
 If a practise is deemed emotionally, physically or otherwise harmful when a culture’s
own broader framework, then it is possible to explore problems, solutions, and to
question the validity of such practises.
 How practise originated, why they believe it, functions of witchcraft.
 If practise is emotional, they can research with a belief system and find solutions to this
act.
 Examples of cultural relativism
 Virginity Testing in Turkey
 Carol Delany, “The Seed and the Soil”: spent years of living in turkey.
 From the perspective of cultural relativism- an anthropological analysis would try to
understand why this practise exists in Turkish cultural terms.
 To establish paternity and to ensure division of property, etc. after death.
 The seed represents sperm.
 That culture believes there is some seed (sperm) that lasts in the women’s body.
 In this village it was common practise for women to undergo virginity testing
 Happens to girls going to university or college or getting married.
 This culture highly values virginity.
 Property is inherited through male line. If a father dies, the properties passed down to
male heirs.
 If a woman to have sex twice in her life and becomes pregnant, then get married to
someone at age 19. In western culture we believe the baby is from her husband.
Cannibalism
Such practises are NOT barbaric, exotic, primitive. Similar concepts exist in our culture.
Example: Catholic practise of transubstantiation, medicinal cannibalism. To declare
another culture to be primitive= ethnocentric!
 Main points: can’t use terms like savages, barbarian, bazaric.
 In western culture, there was cannibalism.
 There are practises in western culture, of consuming portions of mummies.
 Egyptian mummies had medicinal values.

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 Bodies were ground up and put into different medicines.

 You are making a value judgement and asserting your own culture as superior/more
advanced, etc.
 Goal instead with cultural relativism is to understand why such practises exist, what is
their function, how did they originate.
 Cannibalism: The Wari live in the amazon rainforest.
 Up to 1980’s they performed cannibalism
 Endo cannibalism. Funerary cannibalism. Diseased body is consumed at funeral or
mourning rituals.
What’s their rational for doing this?  anthropologist would ask.
 They believe the spirit of your loved one live in that community, portions of body is
consumed.
 They bury someone in the ground, because they believe ground is polluted.
 At end of mourning ritual, they burn the body. Extended members of family consume
some parts of the body.
 It is felt that the memory of person will be kept alive of people who unjust the flesh.
Representing others
 Representation= how we depict people in our writing or through film/pictures
 Ethical responsibility to provide a “fair representation” and to think critically about how
certain representations may negatively affect the people we study.
 Therefore, anthropologists consider: how are “non-Western” people and places
represented in our society?
 Case Study: Yanomami/o of Venezuela
 Everyone creates representation of diff groups of people. Different vocabulary we
choose.
 Make films that anthropologists do.
 Anthropologist must create fair representation.
 Choice of vocab can negatively affect people.
 How do they have impact on their societies.
 How people are represented by mass-media.
 Anthropologists have an ethical or moral idea called fair representation. Accurately
represent experiences in the field.
 We think very carefully the kind of representations, and think carefully how we
represent people.
Who are the Yanomami?

 Indigenous group of approximately 30,000 people in Amazonian regions of Brazil
and Venezuela.
 Today: some live in westernized villages and others in “traditional” villages.
 Indigenous group.
 Living in Amazonian regions in brazil and Venezuela
 Results of academic population decreased. (measles)
 They have agricultural life. Barely interact with outsiders.
Napoleon Chagnon- Yanomami

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 Is alleged to have created harmful and essentialist representations of the Yanomamo

for his own personal gain.
 First anthropologist to make contact with group of Yanomami
 Wrote about ways of life. He wrote ethnography on Yanomami.
 Talking about warfare, beatings aggression violence. These people were violent
people he emphasized.
 Yanomami thought of being aggressive.
 There were consequences. When British campaigned for educational funds in brazil.
They can’t give them money for educational purposes but give money to reduce
violence.
 Wasn’t accurate assessment. He did this to get publicity.
 Other scholars found that Yanomami aren’t actually violent
 Napoleon lied by saying they violent and harmful.
 So they made an essentialist representation of the Yanomamo.
 This benefits the person producing the representation.
Chagnon:
 Held as a great piece of work.
 A lot of anthropologists did the Yanomami research and found some of the
representations are problematic.
 Other anthropologists, had different experiences and didn’t experience violence.
 Napoleon made money off of his ethnography with essential representations.
 This was harmful for Yanomamo.
 Chagnon was seen as a scholar of Yanomamo. When government do projects for the
aboriginal people, they read his readings and work.
 Essentialist representations is stereotypes of a specific culture or group of people.
 Stereotypical representations.
 Napoleon created this essentialist representation by saying they are warfare and
violent.
 He came across these Yanomamo warriors who pointed arrows towards him and
described them as scary, harmful.
 American anthropologist napoleon, first one to make contact.
 Wrote an ethnography about his experience and the culture.
Tourist industry
 How has the tourist industry created essentialist images of various peoples and places?
 Many peoples/places represented as exotic or primitive. What does this mean?
 Case Study: Hawaiian tourism
How has our mass tourists created these images?
 In travel brochures, with tropical places. These people are represented as primitive,
exotic. These representations are inaccurate. They aren’t actually experienced, or
people haven’t actually seen how people are there. This is all business.
 When you try to escape living in technology, by going to other places where life is more
exotic and people close to nature.
Ultimately,

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 There are no primitive, authentic people or exotic cultures. Such ideas are culturally
constructed representations that have MARKET VALUE.
 In anthropology and other academic subjects, no such thing as exotic culture, and
primitive and authentic people.
 These are essential representation created for the marketing and to sell and gardener
high ratings. Concept of representation.
 Example: Hawaii was not only marketed by tourism industry and American government
not until world war 2. Hawaii became destination for tourists to spend time in paradise.
There were lots of industrialization and pollution.
 Hawaii is also filled with buildings and skyscrapers. As a tourist you seen images
reduced to such images such as nature, girl with grass girl. You don’t see skyscrapers.
You see water, trees, mountains. Its untainted by culture, civilization. They are culturally
constructed representations (make up) to make it marketable. What tourist companies
think what we want for a vacation.
 Women dressed in traditional dress, with exotic landscape. These are culturally
constructed representations. You see representations of indigenous people and non-
western exotic people.
Thinking about Identities
Example of a NATURALIZING DISCOURSE:
 We naturalize our familial identities-we assume that shared genes/ ‘blood’
automatically means that this leads to shared
 Identity: how we see ourselves in relation to others
 Gender, religion, sexual, age=different identities.
 Example of naturalizing
 Identities are the biproduct of culture rather than biology.
 Identities are cultural, we have to be taught about cultural identity, religion, and gender.
But it doesn’t stop a person from thinking if your identity is natural. PPL use naturalizing
discourses: think or talk about identities as if they biological
 example: if you share blood (genes)with your parents then it leads to a social bond
between then. We think identities relate to biological/social bonds.
 Example: prenatal rituals
 Example: take pic of ultrasound. You create social identity of motherhood, eg: baby
showers.
Nature versus Nurture?
 Are our identities biological (ie. Are we born with them) or are they the result of cultural
forces?
 Margaret Mead, (1928)
“Coming of Age in Samoa”
 Margaret mead did field work in diff sites.
 In 1920 she lived inn Samoan village. She went to look at people’s experiences of
adolescents as result of biology or culture. She went to see whether the teenagerhood
life is same there as American teen life hood. She found teens are rebellious, drink
alcohol, trying to find your own sense of self.

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 The experiences of teens being rebellious is due to change in hormones, adolescents

going through puberty. They explain that this biological universal results in cultural
universes.
 She lived with 67 teen girls. She found in Samoa teens didn’t act anywhere near like
America. She found relationships between parents and teen girls are loving. No
aggressive disputes. There wasn’t any social experimentation (alcohol) she found that in
Samoa, young children 5 6 years old were encouraged to sexually experiment, show
body parts to each other.
 She found adolescents are shaped by culture.
 Example: religion, parental influence result of acculturation.
Establishing difference
 What are some of the ways in which we communicate the distinctiveness of identities to
one another?
 Identities as EMBODIED—we use our bodies (consciously or unconsciously) to express
identities.
 We use our bodies in unconscious ways to express this identity.
 Examples in which identity can me embodies
 language: manipulate language according to diff identities.
 Can vary between national origin, gender.
 Manipulate clothing: to express diff kinds of identities.
 Homa Hoodfar, she studied young women in Montreal, about their choice of wearing
veil
 Affected class levels, educational levels
Expressing Identity & Difference
 Language-what identities are expressed/negotiated via language?
 Clothing- example of Homa Hoodfar’s work on veiling the importance of ethnography,
cultural relativism and of obtaining diverse perspectives in fieldwork.
Expressing Identity
 Burials and associated grave goods
Developing or strengthening identities…
 How do we reaffirm or strengthen identities and maintain ties with others?
 some ways we construct a sense of identity we can manipulate through clothes, hair,
and construct a type of identity.
 Example: Family relationships, social identities.
Marcel Mauss (1872-1950)
 Nephew of Emile Durkheim (famous sociologist).
 What is important is not the gift but the social ties/bonds that are formed through
obligation.
 Christmas: exchange gifts, cards
 Reciprocity: known as exchange
 Concept of gift giving studied by marcel.
 He found that the exchange of gofts of reciprocity is universal, happens all around the
world.

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 He argues its not the gift that important but what the gift symbolizes, starting or
restarting social relationships.
 Giving someone an expensive gift. Not the gift that counts, but the person is trying to
establish a relationship or reaffirm existing social ties. The energy and money put to buy
the gift is important.
Example of Reciprocity: The Kula Ring
 Documented by Bronislaw Malinowski
 Trobriand Islands (Kiriwina Islands)
The Kula Ring
 The Kula Ring: network of reciprocity.
 Malinowski first anthropologist to go out in the field and did participant observation. He
did this during ww1. He lived in a village in the south pacific (Trobriand islands)
 what they noticed was the reciprocity Kula ring :every month or so you would meet
higher authority men.
 They exchange and give red shell necklaces and in return they get white shell armbands.
 The group travelled from one island to another to exchange red shell necklaces for
white shell armbands.
 Every few months, men from different islands circulate and exchange red shells from
one side and white shells from the other side.
 Men travel from one island to another and are greeted by the people on that island.
 These men are then rewarded with shell. bracelets.
 This exchange only happened between people with prestige and higher class. poor
people were. not. part. of the Kula exchange.
 Malinowski. interested in social functions of the ritual.
 This. practise has a social function of establishing or reaffirming relationships.
 You have to give the Kula to a noble or chief person not just any ordinary person. This
shows you have respect for their identity as chief.
 Ex: Stanley cup travels from one state to another. symbolizes years and years of value in
=hockey.
Commodity versus Gift in Western Contexts

 Commodities: “are items that involve a transfer of value and a counter-transfer: A sells
something to B, and the transaction is finished.”
 No personal relationship; characteristic of capitalism
 Commodities become gifts when we appropriate and personalize them.
 Commodities: buy/sell items and get something in return.
 Capitalism: buy gift card from shoppers, and that’s impersonal
 How to personalizes the gifts? We have to make the person feel like they are getting
something special.
 In our culture we turn commodities into gifts or personalize items for people to enjoy.
 Wrap it nicely or put it in a gift box, attach a sticker or card. showing time and effort was
included in it.
Christmas gifts:

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 Carrier argues that commodities are turned into gifts:

 1) “thought that counts”
 2) Frivolous or luxurious gifts
 3)Wrapped
 4) Shopping to find “right” gift- ritual to convert a commodity into a gift.
 In our culture, nicely wrapping gifts strengthen the relationship.
 Telling stories of how you spent so much time shopping to find the right gift.
 Make people feel special.
 Identity: Techniques to strengthen existing bonds with family member or establish new
ones and mark.
Potlatch
 NW coast-British Columbia
 Competitive feasting and gift exchange.
 potlatch: to mark particular events (birthday birth of child, spiritual event) they engage
in a potlatch.
 The chief of a particular village will announce when they have the pot.
 You show your respect to chief and for your village by pitching in food drinks and often
times art or handmade items and chef will invite etymons in village and neighbouring
village for the evet.
 Every person is showered with gifts (e.g.: loot bag) but big gifts like canoes, piece of art
or clothing.
 your identity as a chief is depended on perceptions of your generosity. (all about giving).
 it was competitive. Your loot bag has to be bigger than theirs.
September 24th
How do we mark changes of identity?
 Rites of Passage: Term coined in 1908 by Arnold Van Gennep.
 Elaborated upon by Victor Turner (1950’s-1980’s)
 Rituals that accompany many changes in status/identity.
 These can be secular or religious. Examples?
 Three stages: Separation, Liminality, and Reincorporation.
 Rites of passage: its universal, according to victor turner it’s found in all places.
 Rite of passage: different kind of rituals that mark changes in identity around us or in us.
changes of identity in these rituals can be secular (non-religious) or spiritual. Ritual is a
repetitive symbolic event.
 example: graduation ceremony.
 PHD grad has different things to wear (big hat, big gown)
 in high school (gown, tassel, hat)
 Rites of passes by turner can be divided into three stages: separation, liminality
Separation
 Often involves physical separation or isolation from a particular group
 Can involve symbols of separation (cutting hair, wearing different clothes)
 Think of military haircuts.
 Example: boot camp

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 Have to pass physical requirements.

 going through several weeks of physical activity, exercise excessively, subjected to rules
that isn’t exposed to outside world.
 boot camp: shift from civilization to barbarian
 physically separated since you have to go to a training away from friends and family .
 Physically separated from society.
 Symbolically separated: if you are a male, military haircut needed into this specific way.
wearing different clothes that mark as a candidate.
 separation can be physical and symbolic.
Liminality
 A stage of being “betwixt-and between” identities.
 A transitional zone/time
 E.g. think about how students are “liminal beings”
 Develop a sense of COMMUNITAS.
 What is communitas? Examples?
 liminality: after you in your dorms at boot camp and going through classes and physical
stress. In the process of being at boot camp you are in this ambiguous cell. Not an active
member.
 In our culture: students are known as being liminal beings. not adolescents. You are
adults but don’t have credentials to get the job.
 Can come with stress, but other people are also undergoing the same process.
 Develop a sense of comuunitas : a sense of community and collectivity. Going through
trials you establish a bond with a particular group of people.
 people in boot camp remain really good friends with people who went at the same time
with them
 In liminality: symbols manipulated to symbolize. if you are getting married and get
engagement ring its worn alone, then you are in a transitional stage. A time of liminality.
Reincorporation
 When you are fully reintegrated into society with a new status/identity.
 If you survive boot camp you go through reincorporation: marked by a ceremony and
dressed up in graduating outfits. Reincorporates you into society with a new status:
member of military.
 Reincorporation marked by symbolic ceremonies.
 reincorporation is the actual wedding ceremony itself: symbols: wedding ring.
 what do these objects and colors mean?
What is religion? What is spirituality?
 Religion: aspects of supernatural.
 in our society we tend to have a separation in secular society and religion. in many
cultures that kind of division doesn’t exist.
Religion
 A western concept like work/economy/politics/technology.
 In western society, Religion is mostly seen as a clearly delineated aspect of society,
separate from the other terms above. Not the case within all cultures.

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 Example: Ancient Egypt.

 Many cultures don’t have a division between secular and religious
 Very western concept, framework, and terminology.
 Interconnected different cultures have different ideas about how these concepts are
infused.
 A. Egypt pharaoh was perceived to be a god/deity, political decisions, war, trade,
informed by spiritual beliefs.
 Problematic? Shanmonah societies.
Formal Definition (text)
 Religion: “An organized system of ideas about the spiritual sphere or the supernatural,
along with associated ceremonial practises by which people try to interpret and/or
influence aspects of the universe otherwise beyond their control.”
 What is the different between religion and spirituality?
 Organized
 Spirtual sphere
 Different ceremonies
Interpret and influence the universe
 Sacrificial offerings, Mayan Aztec to ensure equilibrium, my crops are watered my skin
is clear, must sacrifice people and animals to please gods
 Prayer: asking for something for self or other
 Creations: stories
 War, conflict, personal tragedy
 Increased religiosity in times of crisis
Religion vs Spirituality
 Spiritual
 May adhere to particular religion
May not be a close observer
Feel belief in something, feel more person aspect of identity, don’t feel need to
express as public.
Religion in thus…
 A type of world view (a particular way of conceptualizing of and being in the world) that
informs our sense of mortality, ethics, and in some cases, legal, political systems, etc.
 Other world views include, e.g.: western science
 16% of world’s population is categorized as “nonreligious” (higher in “W. countries” like
Canada)
 Comprised of both beliefs (e.g. reincarnation, deities, spiritual figures) and behaviours
(e.g. rituals like going to mosque or synagogue).
 Ideology
How we see the world
 Religious
Can have multiple world views that influence sense of belonging and world
organization.
Ex: Can be Christian and believe world existed 4.6 billion vs 3000 years ago.

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 Secularism
 More and more people categorize as non religious
23.9% as non spiritual in Canada
 Anthropologists
fieldwork or look at past to learn about particular beliefs, and translate beliefs into
Academic Discourse.
Understand through contemporary theories.
September 26th
The Social functions of Religion
 Social control
Positive and negative sanctions to encourage socially acceptable behaviour.
religions as ethical systems with rules, rewards, and punishments
Ex: The Ten commandments
 Conflict Resolution
resolve tension during stressful times.
marginalized people often use religion to negotiate status by forming own power
structure.
 Intensifying group solidarity
Bring people together, reinforce bonds
religious institutions as meeting places
 Social control
October 1st PP
FIND PEER REVIEWED JOURNAL ARTICLE.
How did religion develop?

All major religions are comprised of myths that govern our behaviours; like a moral conduct
that tells us what we should do and not do.
Anthropoligts looking at the origins of religion: they look at people’s art, what kind of
artistical representation, architecture, books and different types of architecture.
Anthropoligsts try to understand different kinds of supernatural beliefs.
A lot of anthro have ethnocentric attitude.
OCT 3RD PP
Shaman
The distinction between secular world and religion world, isn’t clear cut.
Shamanism is the oldest religious spiritual in the world.
In the upper P period is when shaman existed.
FILM
ordinary ppl should not see shaman eyes it will cause them harm.

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Horns help guide spirit into shaman’s body.

filming shaman in the state in which the spirit has entered, poses a threat to audience
-We see shaman engaging in long term rithimic dancing, singing, drumming. They eluted to a
concept of long pilgrimage. Taking body to a point of emotional and physical fatgue.
the shaman is amost a kint o many ppl and are like doctors to get a particular cure.
Anthropology reading: 1-14

Holistic Perspective: A fundamental principle of anthropology: The various parts of human
culture and biology must be viewed in the broadest possible context in order to understand
their interconnections and interdependence.
 Keeping a holistic perspective allows anthropologists to prevent their own cultural ideas
and values from distorting their research.
 By maintaining a critical awareness of their own assumptions about human nature-
checking and rechecking the beliefs and actions might be shaping their research-
anthropologists strive to gain objective knowledge about human beings.
 Anthropologists work with the understanding that to fully access the complexities of
human ideas, behaviour, and biology, all humans, wherever and whenever must be
studied.
 Culture-bound: A perspective that produces theories about the world and reality that
are based on the assumptions and values from the researcher’s own culture.
 Researchers in each of anthropology’s fields gather and analyze data to explore
similarities and differences among humans, across time and space.
 Applied anthropology: The use of anthropological knowledge and methods to solve
practical problems, often for a specific client.

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 Most applied anthropologists actively collaborate with the communities in which they
work- setting goals, solving problems, and conducting research together.
 Medical Anthropology: A specialization in anthropology that brings theoretical and
applied approaches from cultural and biological anthropology to the study of human
health and disease.
 The work of medical anthropologists sheds light on the connections between human
health and political and economic forces, both locally and globally.
Example of medical anthropology: Margaret Lock: Organ Transplant (found in September
10&12 PP)
 Margaret Lock explored differences between Japanese and North American
acceptance of the biological state of brain death and how it affects the practise of
organ transplantation.
 Part of the reason most North Americans find organ transplantation tolerable with
the determination of brain death is that personhood and individuality are culturally
ascribed to the mind, thus located in the brain.
 North Americans’ acceptance of brain death has allowed for the “gift of life” through
sometimes anonymous organ donation and subsequent transplantation.
 In Japan, the concept of brain death is hotly contested, and organ transplants are
rarely performed. The Japanese idea of personhood does not incorporate a mind-
body split; instead, a person’s identity is tied to the entire body rather than solely to
the brain.
 Consequently, the Japanese reject that a warm body is a corpse from which organs
can be harvested. Further, organs cannot be transformed into “gifts” because
anonymous donation is incompatible with Japanese social patterns of reciprocal
exchange.
 Organ transplantation involves far greater social meaning than the purely biological
movement of an organ from one individual to another. Cultural and biological
process are tightly woven into every aspect of this new social practise.
Cultural Anthropology
 Also called social or sociocultural anthropology.
 The study of patterns in human behaviour, thought, and emotions.
 Focuses on humans as culture-producing and culture-reproducing creatures.
 Culture: a society’s shared and socially transmitted ideas, values, emotions, and
perceptions, which are used to make sense of experience and which generate behaviour
and are reflected in that behaviour. These are the (often unconscious) standards by
which societies structured groups of people-operate. These standards are socially
learned, rather than acquired through biological inheritance.
 Cultural anthropologists may focus on legal, medical, economic, and political, or
religious system of a. given society, knowing that all aspects of culture interrelate as
part of a unified whole.
 They may focus on divisions in society such as gender, age, or class.
 Cultural anthropology has two main components: ethnography & ethnology.

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 Ethnography: a detailed description of a particular culture primarily based on fieldwork

(on-location research). They provide the information used to make systematic
comparisons among cultures all across the world.
 Ethnology: The study and analysis of different cultures from a comparative or historical
point of view, utilizing ethnographic accounts and developing anthropological theories
that help explain why certain important differences or similarities occur among groups.
 Ethnographic fieldwork is a combination of social participation and personal observation
within the community being studied and interviews and discussions with individual
members of a group, the ethnographic method is commonly referred to as participant
observation.
 Such cross-cultural research allows anthropologists to develop theories that help explain
why certain important differences or similarities occur among groups.
Ethnography
 Ethnographer must observe carefully to gain an overview without placing too much
emphasis on one cultural feature at the expense of another. Only by discovering how all
parts of a culture-its social, political, economic and religious practises and institutions-
relate to one another can the ethnographer begin to understand the cultural system.
 Ethnographic fieldwork has transformed from expert Western anthropologists studying
people in “other” places to a collaborative approach among anthropologists from all
parts of the world and the varied communities in which they work.
Ethnology
Ethnography provides the raw data needed for ethnology- the branch of cultural anthropology
that involves cross-cultural comparisons and theories that explain difference or similarities
among groups.
 By making systematic comparisons, ethnologists seek to arrive at scientific explanations
of cultural features and social practises in all times and places.
Applied cultural anthropology
 Nancy Scheper-Hughes has taken her investigative work on the global problem of illegal
trafficking of organs and used it to help found Organs Watch, an organization dedicated
to solving this human rights issue.
Linguistic Anthropology
 Language allows people to create, preserve, and transmit countless details of their
culture from generation to generation.
 Linguistic anthropology: branch of anthropology that studies human languages-looking
at the structure, history, and relation to social and cultural contexts.
 How does language influence or reflect culture? And how does language use differ
among distinct members of a society?
 In earlier years, linguistic anthropology emphasizes the documentation of languages of
cultures under ethnographic study-particularly those whose future seemed precarious
due to colonization, forced assimilation, population decimation, capitalist expansion, or
other destructive forces.
 Linguistic anthropology has three main branches: descriptive linguistics, historical
linguistics, and language in relation to social and cultural settings. All three yield

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valuable information about how people communicate and how they understand the
world around them.
Descriptive Linguistics
 Involves the painstaking work of dissecting a language by recording, delineating, and
analyzing all of its features.
 Leads to deeper understanding of language- its structure (grammar, syntax), its unique
linguistic repertoire (figures of speech, word plays) and its relationship to other
languages.
Historical Linguistics
 Deals with the fact that languages change.
 Examine language that are no longer spoken and investigate earlier and later forms of
the same language.
 By working out relationships among languages and examining their spatial distributions,
they may estimate how long the speakers of those languages have lived where they do.
By identifying those words in related languages that have survived from an ancient
ancestral tongue, they can also suggest not only where, but how, the speakers of the
inherited language lived.
Language in its social and cultural settings
 Linguistics anthropologists study the social and cultural contexts of language. Example:
may research factors such as age, gender, ethnicity, class, religion, occupation, or
financial status affects speech.
 Scientists look into the dynamic relationship between language and culture-investigating
to what degree they mutually influence and inform each other. They may investigate
how a language reflects culturally significant aspects of a people’s environment or
values.
 Linguistic anthropologists may focus on the socialization process through which an
individual becomes part of a culture, moves up in social status, or takes on a new
professional identity.
Applied Linguistic Anthropology
 Linguistic anthropologists help to create written forms of languages that previously
existed only orally.
Archaeology
 The study of cultures through the recovery and analysis of material remains and
environmental data.
 These materials may remain as traces of cultural practises in the past, as well as human,
plant, and marine remains.
 The arrangement of these traces themselves, reflects specific human ideas and
behaviour.
 Such remains can reveal much about subsistence practises.
 Archaeologists use material remains to investigate settlement or migration patterns
across vast areas.
 These remains help archaeologists reconstruct biocultural context of past human
lifeways and patterns.

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 Archaeologists organize this material and use it to explain cultural variability and change
through time.
Historical archaeology
 Archaeologists may study those which historic documents are available to supplement
the material remains.
 Historical Archaeology: the archaeological study of places for which written records
exist.
 Written records are associated with governing elites rather than with farmers, fishers,
laborers, or slaves.
Bioarchaeology
 The archaeological study of human remains-bones, skulls, teeth, and sometimes hair,
dried skin, or other tissue-to determine the influences of culture and environment on
human biological variation.
 Human remains excavated at archaeological sites provide valuable clues about the
lifestyle and health of prehistoric peoples, including information about activity,
physiological stress, nutrition, disease, and social rank.
 Some archaeologists specialized in ethnobotany, studying of how people of a given
culture made use of indigenous plants. Others specialized in zooarchaeology, tracking
the animal remains recovered in excavations.
Cultural Resource Management
 A branch of archaeology concerned with survey and/or excavation of archaeological and
historical remains that might be threatened by construction or development; also
involved with policy surrounding protection of cultural resources.
 This research is a legally required part of any activity that might threaten important
aspects of a country’s prehistoric and historic heritageMain difference between
regular archaeology.
Physical Anthropology
 Also called biological anthropology
 The systematic study of humans as biological organisms.
 Physical anthropologists concentrated on human evolution, primatology, growth and
development, human adaptation, and forensics.
 Molecular anthropology: the anthropological study of genes and genetic relationships,
which contributes significantly to our understanding of human evolution, adaption and
diversity.
 Comparisons among groups separated by time, geography, or the frequency of a
particular gene can reveal how much humans have adapted and where they have
migrated.
Paleoanthropology
 Study of biological changes through time (evolution) to understand the origins and
predecessors of the present human species.
 Paleoanthropologists seek to understand how, where, and why we became the
species we are today.
 Paleoanthropologists study primates to reconstruct the intricate. Path of human
evolution.

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 Biocultural: An approach that focuses on the interaction of biology and culture.

 They deal with comparing fossilized skeletons of our ancestors to other fossils and to
the bones of living members of our species.
 The strive to scientifically reconstruct the complex course of human evolutionary
history.
Primatology
 Studying the anatomy of other primates helps us understand what we share with our
closest living relatives and what makes humans unique.
 The study of living and fossil primates
 Humans are members of the ape family.
Human growth, adaption, and variation
 Some physical anthropologists examine biological mechanisms of growth as well as the
impact of the environment on the growth process.
 Franz Boas, a pioneer of American anthropology compared the heights of immigrants
who spent their childhood in the “old country: (Europe), to the increased heights
reached by their children who grew up in the United States.
 Physical anthropologists study the impact of poverty, pollution, and disease on growth.
 Comparison between human and nonhuman primate growth patterns can provide clues
to the evolutionary history of humans. Detailed anthropological studies of the
hormonal, genetic, and physiological bases of healthy growth in living humans also
contribute significantly to the health of children today.
 Studies of human adaptations focus on the capacity of humans to adapt or adjust to
their material environment biologically and culturally.
 Developmental adaptations: responsible for some features of human variation, such as
enlargement of the right ventricle of the heart to help push blood into the lungs.
 Physiological adaptations: short-term changes in response to a particular environmental
stimulus.
Forensic Anthropology
 The identification of human skeletal remains for legal purposes
 Helps law enforcement authorities identify murder victims, and investigate human
rights abuses such as systematic genocide, terrorism, and war crimes.
 Forensic anthropologists can also determine whether the person was right-hand or left-
hand, exhibited any [hysical abnormalities, or had experienced trauma.
 Empirical: An approach based on observations of the world rather than on intuition or
faith.
 Theory: a coherent statement that provides an explanatory framework for
understanding; an explanation or interpretation supported by a reliable body of data.
 Doctrine: An assertion of opinion or belief formally handed down by an authourity as
true and indisputable.
 Culture shock: In fieldwork, an anthropologist’s personal disorientation and anxiety that
may result in depression.
Page 23-36
Question 1.1: Why do human beings differ in their beliefs and behaviours?

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 Members of the same culture share the same beliefs and there are different cultures
which leads to different beliefs.
 All societies have what are for them appropriate rules of courtship, ideas about child
rearing, procedures for exchanging goods, methods of food production and techniques
for building shelters.
 Culture: the system of meaning about the nature of experience that are shared by a
people and passed on from one generation to another, including the meanings that
people give to things, events, activities and people.
 Culture is about meaning, cultural meanings are learned and then once meanings are
learned, they are shared by other members of a particular culture.
 For example, death is viewed as a transition from one world to another, in other
cultures death is known as the last stage of a life span. Other cultures view death as a
never-ending cycle of birth, death, and rebirth.
 Example: The Kwakwaka’wakw of British Columbia believe that when a person dies,
the soul leaves the body and enters the body of a salmon. When a salmon is caught and
eaten, a soul is released and free to enter the body of another person.
 In rural china, the head of a household addresses the. Shrine to ask the ancestor’s
advice when any major decision is to be made.
 In southern Italy, by contrast, funeral customs were designed to discourage the dead
from returning. Relatives placed useful. Objects such. As matches and small change near
the body to placate the soul of the deceased and. To ensure that. It did not. Return to
disturb the living.
 The Dani of New Guinea require a close female relative of a recently deceased person
to sacrifice part of a finger. When the Wari’s of Western Brazil still lived independent of
Western Civilization, they disposed of the bodies of their dead by eating and roasting
flesh, certain internal organs, and. Sometimes ground bones. They ate the dead not
because they liked the taste of human flesh, but rather out of a respect and compassion
for the dead person and the dead person’s family.
 In Southern Europe, widows were required to shave their heads; at one time in India,
widows were cremated alive at their husband’s funeral, a practise known as sati.
 In most North American societies, survivors of the deceased are expected to restrain
their grief almost as if it were a contagious disease.
 In Italy, Southern Italian women had their hair pulled and are restrained from flinging
themselves into an open grave.
 Food is another way of how culture takes the “raw materials” of human life and making
them meaningful. Insects are allowed to be eaten in some cultures while in other
cultures are horrified of eating insects. In north American culture, milk is allowed to be
consumed. But in China, milk is undrinkable.
 Human beings are cultural animals; they ascribe meaning s of their own creation to
objects, persons, behaviours, and emotions and events and then proceed to act as If
those meanings are real.
 Clifford Geertz suggests that human beings are compelled to impose meaning on their
experiences because without those meanings to help them comprehend experience an
impose an order on the universe, the world would just be jumble.

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 Geertz beliefs that humans are unfinished or incomplete species or animals who
complete themselves through culture.
Question 1.2: Is it Possible to see the World through the Eyes of Others?
 The anthropologist must be able to look beyond everyday appearance to decipher the
often hidden meanings or beliefs, objects, and behaviours, while setting aside her or his
preconceptions about what is normal or proper.
 The anthropologist must also learn one culture and then relate what he or she has
learned to members of another culture in order to translate the meanings of one world
into the meanings of another.
 Many anthropologists experience cultural traditions and values vastly different from
their own.
The Ethnocentric Fallacy and the Relativist Fallacy
 If we reject the behaviours of others it is called ethnocentric fallacy: the idea that our
beliefs and behaviours are right and true, while those other peoples are wrong or
misguided.
 They try to show that what often appears on the surface to be an odd belief or bizarre
behaviour is functional and logical in the context of a particular culture.
 Ethnocentric fallacy is intellectually and methodologically intolerable. If everyone
everywhere thinks their ideas and behaviours are right and others’ are wrong then an
intellectual and social dead end is inevitable.
 There is also ethnocentrism involved: The tendency to judge the belief and behaviours
of other cultures from the perspective of one’s own culture.
 Cultural Relativism is opposite to ethnocentrism raises issues of its own. Culture
relativism holds that no behaviour or belief could be judged to be odd or wrong;
instead, we must try to understand a culture on its own terms and to understand
behaviours or beliefs for the purpose, function, or meaning they have people in the
societies in which we find them.
 Cultural relativism holds that a specific belief or behaviour can be understood only in
relation to the culture-the systems of meanings in which is embedded.
 We find ourselves falling quickly into relativistic fallacy, the idea that it is impossible to
make moral judgements about the beliefs and behaviour of other cultures; no beliefs or
behaviours can be condemned.
Virginity Testing in Turkey and Cannibalism Among the Wari’
 Young women in Turkey are expected to avoid sexual relations prior to marriage,
although the same rule does not apply to men.
 In this tradition, the bride’s virginity is revealed by displaying, the morning after the
wedding, the sheet that was spread on the couple’s wedding bed with the telltale
hymeneal bloodstain.
 The US human rights report condemns the traditional testing as well as the reported
practise of forcing tests on hospital patients, students, and applicants for government
jobs.
 As anthropologists we must ask: is the Human rights group being ethnocentric in.
judging Turkish customs by North American norms, or is it correctly identifying abuses of
women that must be corrected?

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 In the book The seed and the soil written by Carol Delany describes how virginity testing
relates to the way in which Turkish villagers conceptualize and explain the reproductive
process.
 They see producing children as analogous to the planting and growing of crops;the man
provides the “seed” with his semen and the women serves as the “soil”. In which the
seed germinates and grows.
 This idea provides villagers with a way of thinking about and under-standing
reproduction. However, the metaphor of seed and soil has at least one important
implication; since seeds do not have a limited life span, as we know semen to have,
villagers believe that once planted, the seed (semen) may grow at any time.
 If women had sexual relations with a man other than her husband at any time prior to
her marriage, the paternity of the child will be in doubt.
 Descent in traditional Turkish villages is closely tied to many things, including property
rights, uncertainty about the identity of the true father can have major implications.
 Wari have a practise of roasting and eating the dead. This practise would guarantee
revulsion and fascination. However, it also has political implications: for centuries,
cannibalism was the ultimate smear tactic.
 In 1510 Christians were dominant and were claiming the right to decide ultimately what
is right and what is wrong. With that power, they imposed their own rights and way of
life.
 European physicians prescribed the consumption of human flesh, heart, bones, and
other body parts as cures for such afflictions as arthritis, reproductive disorders, sciatica,
warts, and skin blemishes.
 Human blood was thought to be a cure for epilepsy, and physicians recommended that
it be drunk immediately after the supplier died. Physicians also thought that the blood
of someone. Who died violently was particularly effective.
 The western way of burying the dead. Was horrific to the. Wari’s as their cannibalism
might have been non-Wari. This also violated fundamental Wari’ values. They found the
ground dirty and discarding things on the ground was disrespectful. Special ritual objects
were never supposed to touch the ground.
 By consuming the dead, Wari’s are trying to get rid of the painful memories of their loss.
The Wari’s also burned the house and personal possessions of the deceased. Where the
hunter made a kill or women felled a fruit tree.
 For North Americans, a dead body is only a shell and the soul has escaped. The Wari
however separate the dead from the living.
Objectivity & Morality
 Critical cultural relativism: An alternative perspective on cultural relativism that poses
questions about cultural beliefs and practises in terms of who accepts them and why,
who they might be disproportionately harming and benefiting, and the cultural power
dynamics that enable them.
 She reported in Brazil women allowed their starving infants to die in the belief that they
were doomed anyway.
 Human rights activists are skeptical about cultural relativism. If they say we must
tolerate beliefs and practises of other cultures because to do otherwise would be

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ethnocentric, how can we ever criticize what seem to be violations of human rights,
such the right to bodily integrity, or the right to be free from torture, arbitrary
imprisonment, slavery, and genocide?
 It is impossible to make judgements without being ethnocentric since you are adapted
to your culture and cannot compare your culture to others and how brutal their culture
can be, you cannot make those ethnocentric judgements.
 There is no answer to whether it is right or wrong to judge the beliefs and practises of
others to be right or wrong.
Constructing Identities: pages 48-68

 Social Identity: The view that people of their own and others’ positions in society. These
learned personal and social affiliations may include gender, sexuality, race, class,
nationality, and ethnicity. Individuals seek confirmation from others that they occupy.
Question 6.1: How is identity and one’s sense of self, learned?
Learning Identities
 Story telling is a way of communicating information from one generation to another
 Enculturation: The process through which individuals learn an identity. It can
encompass parental socialization, the influence of peers, the mass media, government,
and other forces.
 In Canada, the mass media plays an important role in shaping ideals of canadianness
through their depictions of sport.
 Children are enculturated into the norms of “Canadian Society”
 Social identities such as gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity and national identity are not
biological.
 Imagined community: A term coined by benedict Anderson in 1983. It refers to the fact
that even in the absence of face-to-face interactions, a sense of community (e.g.:
nationalism) is culturally constructed by forces such as the mass media, or through
experience.
 Even a person in Halifax had a taste of canadianness through mass media by watching
events such as the Olympics or Canada day ceremonies.
 Nature vs. nurture: A phrase coined by Sir Francis Galton in 1874, that references a
long-standing scholarly debate concerning whether or not human behaviours and
identities are the result of nature (biological and genetic factors) or nurture (learned and
cultural factors).
 He believed that many human differences including intelligence was rooted in biology or
‘nature’. At this time many scholars felt that many of our identities such as race, class
are genetic and thus “natural” and that we were born the way we are.
One of.

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 The first anthropologists to engage in this nature vs. nurture debate was Margaret
Mead.
 She conducted research on American Samoan girls on the acts of teenage rebellion and
experimentation were result of hormonal and other physical changes brought by
puberty or “nature”. She wondered whether it is similar in other cultures.
 She observed that their experiences were different than that of American girls. In
Samoa, girls were given freedom to experiment with their sexuality and did not go
through periods of torment with their parents.
 Experiences of adolescents varied depending on the culture they were raised in.
 She also visited three tribes along the Sepik River in Papua New Guinea to explore
difference in gender roles. She found that in each tribe, men and women took on
different responsibilities based on gender. She proved that human behavioural
differences such as gendered divisions was constructed by culture not biology.
Question 6.2: How does the concept of personhood vary from society to society?
The importance of self
 Names show differentiation between people and provide an identity.
 Jorge Chimbinda explored the process of “naming”. There are two ways:
one is name a child after a relative who is either alive or dead. Second way
is to give the child a new name that refers to some circumstance that was
present during the child’s birth.
 If a child was born during a severe drought, the child will be named related
to the drought in remembrance of the suffering the child went through.
 The Umbundu naming system is a historical version of cultural values such
as identity, kinship, geography, folk-tales, stories, and proverbs. From the
Umbundu perspective names are tools with which people reward the life
they. Have received from their relatives and their world.
 Each child represents one of his or her living relatives or ancestors.
The Egocentric self and the Sociocentric self
 The egocentric and sociocentric self are ideal types or generalizations about
the nature of self in different societies.
 Egocentric: A view of self that defines each person as a replica of all
humanity, as the location of motivations and drives, and as capable of
acting independently from others.
 Sociocentric: A context-dependent view of self. The self exists as an entity
only within the concrete situations or roles occupied by the person.
 From the ego-centric view, each person is perceived to be capable of acting
independently from others, and the locus motivations and drives is thus
internal.

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Personhood in Japan
 Christie Kiefer explained that the Japanese are more likely to include within
the boundaries of the self the social groups which the person is a member.
 Children in Japan are taught to be interdependent and that interdependent
between them and their family or a group is more important than
independence.
 Japanese language expresses the view of self. Their language is
characterized by Keigo meaning “polite speech”. Keigo has the effect of
establishing at the outset of a conversation the relative social standing
degree intimacy of speaker and listener.
 The Japanese speak differently depending on their social position relative
to the person with whom they are speaking to.
 In terms of social interactions, North Americans try to stand out and assert
themselves. Whereas, in Japan, social interactions should be characterized
by restraint or reserve, traits they identify as enryo.
 With enryo, the giving of opinions is avoided.
Question 6.3: How do Societies Distinguish Individuals from one Another?
 In many societies the most important characteristics for defining the self
are related to kinship and family membership.
 In these societies, kinship is the central organizing principle-the main
determinant of a person’s social identity.
 Language is another identity marker. Language is tied to national identity.
 Example: Quebec wanted to be isolated from the rest of Canada. They
believe identity is not solely based on language.
 There was conflict between the French and British settlers to Canada. Also,
English is has the ruling power which is why the French community
protested to be an independent nation.
 Québec started building its own sense of nationalism.
Question 6.4: How do societies mark changes in Identity?
 Identities are not static, people continue to change their identities.
 Identities are marked with religious or secular events and ceremonies.
 Arnold Van Gennep introduced the concept of rites of passage.
 This term refers to a category of rituals that mark a person’s passage from
one identity to another.
 He identified 3 phases of the rites of passage: separation, liminality, and
reincorporation.

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 In separation the rituals separate the person from an existing identity; next
the person enters a transition phase; finally the changes are incorporated
into a new identity.
 These phases are not elaborated in all ceremonies
 Rite of Passage: The term coined in 1908 by Arnold Van Gannep to refer to
the category of rituals that accompany changes in status, such as the
transition from boyhood to manhood, living to dead, or student to
graduate.
 Victor Turner (1967) used van Gannep’s model of rites of passage to
describe the move from boyhood to manhood among the Ndembu of
Zambia. When Ndambu boys reach puberty, they are taken, as a group of
age mates, away from their mothers and out of the village (separation) to
live in the forest (transition). There, the boys shave their heads and remove
anything from their bodies that might identify themselves as individuals.
 While in the forest, the young Ndembu are circumcised ands taught all of
the special knowledge that Ndembu men know.
 When the boys are in the forest, they have no identity: they are no longer
boys but are not men yet. Turner calls this the “betwixt and between”.
 Once their circumicisons heal and the lessons are completed, the young
men return to the village (reintegration) as new persons with new
identities.
Question 6.5: How do individuals Commute their Identities to One Another?
 Clothing can express identity as well as gender, sexuality, ethnicity, or
religious affiliation.
Rituals of Gift Giving & Hospitality
 Anthropologist Marcus Mauss created a work called The Gift.
 He identified the Principle of reciprocity =According to Marcel Mauss, gift
giving involves reciprocity. The idea is that the exchange of gifts creates a
feeling of obligation, in that the gift must be repaid; the giving and
receiving of gifts.
 His main point is that gifts in which are voluntary, disinterested, and
spontaneous, are obligatory. The giving of gift creates a tie with the person
who receives it and who, on some future occasion, obliged to reciprocate.
 To Mauss, what matters is not what is given and received signal the
identities of the participants in the exchange and the kind of relationship
that exists between them.

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 If the gifts are roufghly of equal value, the relationship is one of equality.
But if the gifts are unequal in value, the person who gives the more
valuable gift is generally of higher status than the receiver.
 Example of Gift Giving: The Kula Ring of the Trobriand Islanders. The
seagoing Trobrianders leave their homes on islands off the eastern coast of
New Guinea and travel from island to island, visiting and trading.
 In their travels is their patterns of gift giving. Each man has trading partners
on the islands he visits, and these partnerships. Are signalled with gifts of
red shell necklaces or white shell armbands. As a man travels and trades
objects, he gives and receives necklaces and armbands. A man who either
receives an armband or a necklace does not keep it but passes it along
another trading partner.
 There is a set pattern to the exchange: neclakces travel from island to
island in a clockwise direction. While armbands move counterclockwise.
The time between exchanges and distances between. The islands are so
great that it may take 2-10 years before the necklaces and armbands make
a complete circle.
 Kula Ring: A system of inter-island gift exchange documented by
anthropologist Broinslaw Malinowski in Trobriand Islands. It involves the
exchange of shell necklaces and armbands. According to Malinowski, the
kula ring serves, among other things, to create alliances and social ties
among individuals on different islands.
 The Kula Ring serves as a concrete representation of ties among
individuals. Any change in the pattern of gift giving reflects a change in the
nature of the social ties.
 Special gifts that are individually owned are also circulated, and the
owner’s status and renown grow
 as the good he owns circulate along predetermined paths.
 A successful Kula operator participates in many such exchanges and can
profit them by keeping items for as long as he can before passing them
along. Of course, if. He keeps them too long, others will be reluctant to
exchange. It is important to take a part in the Kula Ring.
 Anthropologist, Margret Anderson studied another famous example of gift
giving: the potlach ceremony of the indigenous peoples of the Northwest
Coat of British Columbia.
 Among the Tsimshian, the potlach is typically a feast that legitimates a
change in social relations, such as a funeral.

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 The Tsimshian are organized into matrilineal clans or houses. Each house
has associated with it a fixed number of personal names, and each name
has associated with a fixed number of personal names, and each name has
associated has associated with it specific spiritual powers, honors and
objects of wealth.
 The name of a Tsimshian is vacated until it is claimed by or given to
someone else. If the name vacated belongs to a chief then his the feast will
begin after the death of the chief and end with the acceptance of. A new
chief who is the kid of the previous chief. A person who disgraces his name
must give a feast to. “clean the name”.
 The potlach feast does more than allow a Tsimshian to botain a new name
and identity. It also serves to symbolically reorder and validate the names,
and the social positions of everyone at the feast through the distribution of
gifts. Members of the house of the deceased generally serve as hosts to
member’s of the diseased’s father’s house. The guests are feasted for the
services they have performed and as repayment for the gifts they formerly
gave the deceased to help him acquire his name.
 When the guests are seated, the host announces the gifts they are giving
to the guests, along with the name of the person from the host group who
has contributed the gift. Higher ranking guests receive more gifts at a
potlach. Than lower ranking guests.
 The seating arrangements and the value of the gifts given to guests at the
feast serve to announce or publicly notarize the social position or identity
of each guest.
 Anderson argues that although potlach has changed since Christianity was
introduced, its meaning and symbolic value have remained, in part,
because as long as the feasts began with a prayer, Duncan considered
them respectful.
 Exchanges are not only with materials but also emotions. Hawaiians define
a desired identity in part by expressions of gregariousness and hospitality.
 The emotional qualities of a person’s relationships are one criterion by
which others judge, interact with, and respond to that person.
Gifts and Commodities
 An important characteristic of traditional Kula and potlach goods is that
they have histories. A Trobriander who receives a necklace or armband can
probably recite the history of the object, sometimes from its creation
through all the persons who possessed it at one time or another.

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 The histories of these objects. Especially when given as gifts are vital to the
identity of the person who gies them.
 Gifts that are made by the giver have meaning other than the object itself.
 James Carrier in his book Gifts & Commodities: Exchange and Western
Capitalism Since 1700 , argues that since the 16th and 17th century, the
production and distribution of goods has become impersonal and that the
spread of industrial and commercial capitalism has meant the spread of
alienated objects and relations.
 Commodities: Traditionally, commodities are items that involve a transfer
of value and a counter-transfer: A sells something to B., and the transaction
is finished. As is typical of capitalist market-exchange systems, a long-
standing personal relationship between buyer and seller is not established.
 We convert commodities into possessions and gifts says carrier, through a
process called appropriation: buying a gift and enhancing it more giving it
more meaning.
Gift Giving and Christian Celebration of Christmas in North America
 Examples: Christians’ identity is recognized through Christmas.
 Christmas heightens a person’s sense of family identity, expressing how
warm the family is and how col the world outside may be.
 Carrier argues that shopping for a gift itself is a part of converting
commodities to gift because you take the time to find the right gift for
the right person.
 Carrier suggests that shopping is a method of appropriation converting
commodity into a gift: we exercise a choice from among the mass of
commodities presented to us.
Page 97-109
Spirituality, Religion, and Shamanism
 Religions play an important role in determining cultural identity in many
societies across the globe, sometimes overruling other major identity
markers such as kinship, social class, and ethnicity or nationality.
 Spirituality and culture are part of a culture’s system’s superstructure,
earlier defined as the collective body of ideas, beliefs, and values by which
members of a culture make sense of the world and their place in it.
 Worldview: The collective body of ideas that members of a culture
generally share concerning the ultimate shape and substance of their
reality.
Roles of Spirituality & Religion

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 Specific religious beliefs and practises fulfill individual and collective

psychological and emotional needs. Also helps reduce anxiety by providing
an orderly view on the universe and answers to existential questions,
including those concerning suffering and death.
 They provide a path by which people transcend the burdens of mortal
existence and attain, if only momentarily, hope and relief.
 They also numerous cultural purposes. Religion is held by a group of people
reinforces community values and provides moral guidelines for personal
conduct.
 People turn to religion and spirituality to attain a certain goal.
Anthropological Approach to Spirituality and Religion
 Religion provides a powerful ideology justifying inequality in a state society.
 Religion: An organized system of ideas about the spiritual sphere or the
supernatural, along with associated ceremonial practises by which people
try to interpret and/or influence aspects of the universe otherwise beyond
their control.
 Spirituality: Concern with the sacred, as distinguished from materials
matters. In contrast to religion, spirituality is often individual rather than
collective and does not require a distinctive format or traditional
organization.
Myth and the Mapping of a Sacred Worldview
 Myth: A sacred narrative that explains the fundamentals of human
evidence- where we and everything in our world came from =, why we are
here, and. Where we are going.
 Myths are believed to be true and sacred.
 A myth features supernatural forces and provide an ethnic code for its
audience.
Supernatural Beings and Spiritual Forces
 A hallmark of religion is belief in spiritual forces and super-natural beings.
Attempting to control by religious means what cannot be controlled in
other ways, humans turn to prayer, sacrifice, and other religious or spiritual
rituals.
 Supernatural beings or spiritual beings are associated with unique
geographic locations: water, trees, mountains in many cultures.
 Supernatural beings can be divided into three categories: deities (gods and
goddesses), ancestral spirits, and other sort of spirit beings. Although the

lOMoARcPSD|1321297
variety of deities and spirits recognized by the world’s cultures is

tremendous, it is possible to make certain generalizations about them.
Gods and Goddesses
 Many religions recognize males and female deities. Gods and goddesses, or
divinities, are the great and more remote supernatural beings. Cultures that
subordinate men to women attribute masculine gender to the more
powerful gods or supreme deity.
 Such male-privileging religions developed in many societies traditionally
based on the herding of animals or intensive agriculture.
 Goddesses are likely to be prominent in societies where women play a
significant role in the economy and enjoy relative quality with men.
 Some religions recognize deities represented as male-female combinations.
Example: Hindu religion (Ardhanishvara).
 Monotheism: The belief is only one supremely powerful divinity as creator
and master of the universe.
 Polytheism: The belief in multiple gods/goddesses as contrasted with
monotheism.
 Pantheon: All gods and goddesses of a people.
Ancestral Spirits
 Beliefs in ancestral spirits support the concept that human beings consist
of. Intertwined components: body/matter (physical), and mind/soul
(spiritual). This dualistic concept carries with it the possibility of a spirit
being freed from the body- through dream, trance, or death-and even
having a separate existence.
 In African culture, people believe ancestral spirits behave like humans. They
feel and may die a second death by drowning or burning. Because spirits
sometimes participate in family and lineage events, seats will be provided
for them even though they are invisible.
 They also play an important role in China. Giving birth to sons is historically
regarded as an obligation to the ancestors because boys inherit their
father’s ancestral duties. Boys will take care of the parents while they are
alive and then when they die, the boy will take care of them in thew
spiritual world.
Other Types of Supernatural Being and Spiritual Forces
Animism
 The belief that nature is enlivened or energized by distinct personalized spirit being
separated from bodies.

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 Spirits like souls and ghosts are thought to enter humans bodies animals and plants.
These spirits can be benevolent, malevolent, or even neutral.
 Animism is typical of those who see themselves as being a part of nature rather than
superior to it. Example: deities create the world.
Animatism
 The belief that nature is enlivened or energized by an impersonal spiritual force or
supernatural energy, which may make itself manifest in any special place, thing, or living
creature.
 Animism(a belief in distinct spirit beings) and animatism (which lacks particular
substance or individual form) are not mutually exclusive and are often found in the
same culture.
 Certain locations such as waterfalls trees and forests are considered sacred.
Religious Spirits
 Most cultures include individuals who guide others in their spiritual search and ritual
practises.
Priests and Priestesses
 A full time religious specialist formally recognized for his or her role in guiding religious
practises of others and for contacting and influencing supernatural powers.
 How they eat dress and live distinguish between others in society indicating their status.
 Groups of priests control holy sites of worship, preserving prescribed rituals and
maintaining possession of pictures and sacred texts.
 When deities are identified in masculine terms, it is not surprising that most important
religious leadership positions are reserved for men.
Spiritual Lineages: Legitimizing Religious leadership
 Spiritual Lineage: A principle of leadership in which divine authority is passed down
from a spiritual founding figure such as a prophet or saint, to a chain of successors.
 It not only applies to leadership of entire religions but to segmental divisions of religion.
 Kings in traditional political dynasties derive legitimacy from their ancestral blood
lineage, religious leaders obtain it from their spiritual line of descent as specified in each
particular religious tradition. The longer these lineages have existed, the. greater their
opportunities for building up a fund of symbolic capital-ideas and rituals.
 There are four ways of having spiritual lineages: In some religions, high-ranking priests
claim divine authority based on recognized biological descent from a common ancestor
believed to have been a prophet or a saint. In other religions, leaders train a spiritual
heir. A third form of legitimizing the authority of a religious leader is by election. A
fourth method is found in Buddhism divided into four major orders. Each has its own
monks of various ranks from novice to lama and a wealth of ancient texts meditations
and ritual practises. Highest is reincarnated priests.
Shamans
 Individuals capable of connecting with supernatural beings and forces. This skill is based
on learning techniques, personality, and particular emotional experiences that could be
described as “mystical”.
 Shamans are naturally empowered and can heal the sick, change the weather and
control the movements of animals.

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 Shaman referred to medical religious specialists among the Tungus & other Siberian
pastoral nomads with animist beliefs. Techniques such as fasting, drumming, chanting
allows shamans enter into trance.
 In this state, they experience visions of an alternate reality inhabited by spirit beings
such as guardian, animal spirits who may assist with healing.
 Anthropologist Michael Harner: a modern-day shamanic practioner famous for his
participant observation among Shaur Indian Shamans in the Amazon Rainforest, defined
a shaman as someone who at will enters an altered state of consciousness “to contact
and utilize an ordinarily hidden reality in order to acquire knowledge , power, and to
help other persons. The shaman has at least one, and usually more, ‘spirits’ in his or her
personal service.
Shamanic Experience
 Someone may become a shaman by passing through stages of learning and practical
experience involving psychological and emotional ordeals brought about by isolation,
fasting, physical torture, sensory deprivation, and hallucination.
 Hallucination occur once in the trance state; they can be spontaneous and are induced
by drumming or consuming mind-altering drugs.
 The human nervous system produces these trance states.
 Shamans can be contrasted with priests and priestesses in that the latter serve deities of
the society.
Shamanic Healing
 Ju’/Hoansi Bushmen of Africa’s Kalahari Desert do the trence dance. They believe illness
and misfortune are caused by invisible arrows shot by spirits.
 The arrows can be removed by healers, those who possess the powerful healing force
called n/um. Some shamans can n/um by solo singing or instrument playing, but more
often this is accomplished through the medicinal curing ceremony or trance dance.
 For healing to occur, the shaman needs to be convinced of the effectiveness of his or
her spiritual powers and techniques.
 Shamanic healing ceremonies involve social-psychological dynamics also present in
Western medical treatments.
Ritual Performances
 Rituals: A culturally prescribed symbolic act or procedure designed to guide members of
a community in an orderly way through personal and collective transitions.
 Rituals provide symbolic means of reinforcing a group’s social bonds. Not. All of them
are sacred.
Rites of Purification: Taboo & Cleansing Ceremonies
 Rituals have been developed to symbolically restore one’s place in the cosmic order,
removing “dirt” washing “impurity” and making “clean” in body, mind, and soul.
 According to Mary Douglas “Dirt offends against order. Eliinating it is not a negative
movement, but a positive effort to organise the environment”
 Taboo: Culturally prescribed avoidances involving. Ritual prohibitions, which, if not
reserved, lead to supernatural punishment.
 When taboo is violated, punishment is given and can be in the form of unlucky accident,
illness, death, etc.

lOMoARcPSD|1321297
 Rite of purification: A symbolic act carried out by an individual or a group to establish or

restore purity when someone has violated a taboo or is otherwise unclean.
OCT 22pp
How do religios.
Religions are constantly moving.
All religions start off as revivalization mvoements. The anthrop responsible for setting this idea,
is ….
You tend to get revivalization business occurring in…..

If you are experiencing so much stress, then you might become disenchanted with your religion
or spiritualiztion .
It could be effect of colonialism.

lOMoARcPSD|1321297
New ideas and beliefs: missing of old and new that can create a new religious movement.
After years and years and generations 100s of years, revivalization movement develop a
standardized set of myths, rules, doctrines, and develop a large following.
Ex:Christianity:
Developed as a religion under colonialism, and roman colonialism. Rich ppl experience this.
Jesus is perceived by general population of the kind.H egathered followers.
All religion start as a revivalization movement. Numerous beliefs merged together. Blending of
religion and sync of religion, all religion involve blending of old and new. Christianity, was vety
blending of Judaism, forms of
-Cargo cults
A type of revivalization movement, and called millenarian movement. Meaning, This feeling
that through the use of particular prayers and reituals there will be a social transformation and
that things will get better.
-Papa new guinea and islands in Melanesia.

Convert ppl to Christianity.
Ex: cARGO CULT

-After ww2 many of islands were allied,
The chiefs prestige and power symbolized by chief having acess to different kinds of goods that
regular ppl don’t have.
Right after ww2, a lot of the us army members became deities for these people.
John Frum is an army officer engaged in exchange in goods and jewellery and became values bc
hes the one who accumulated stuff.
Thet brought cargo and wealth.

Chagnge religion and develop a new religion
These cargos involved synthetic magic of like produces like.
Airplanes are tiny and some are more lifesize.
Prince phillip: they feel that he is a dietie
Prince phillip and quren visited Vanuatu, under rich colonialism ppl were suffering from
poverty, diseases. PPl look to prince phillip and heard the rumours about him and how the.
Queen and king bring gifts and presents to Vanuatu and has lots of stuff so they worship him.
However he was planning to retire and they were disappointed thinking he wont come back
and bring wealth and prosperity.

lOMoARcPSD|1321297
Prince phillip is from tannu which is what the ppl on the island think.
And. Beleve is the truth.

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Anthropology- Lecture- Notes

Introduction to Anthropology: Identity Race and Power (McMaster University)

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ANTHROPOLOGY LECTURE NOTES

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September 5th, 2018

September 10th, 2018

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 Long term field work, 1 full time year in the year.

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Different types of linguistics:

Example of a sociolinguistic: Paul Manning,

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 Is shared/universal: every person past present future, belong to a specific culture

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 Judging people from your perspective.

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 Bodies were ground up and put into different medicines.

Who are the Yanomami?

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 Is alleged to have created harmful and essentialist representations of the Yanomamo

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 The experiences of teens being rebellious is due to change in hormones, adolescents

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Commodity versus Gift in Western Contexts

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 Carrier argues that commodities are turned into gifts:

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 Have to pass physical requirements.

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 Example: Ancient Egypt.

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FIND PEER REVIEWED JOURNAL ARTICLE.

How did religion develop?

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Horns help guide spirit into shaman’s body.

Anthropology reading: 1-14

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 Ethnography: a detailed description of a particular culture primarily based on fieldwork

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 Biocultural: An approach that focuses on the interaction of biology and culture.

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Constructing Identities: pages 48-68

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 Specific religious beliefs and practises fulfill individual and collective

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variety of deities and spirits recognized by the world’s cultures is

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