A.
Evolutionism (19th century) - Societal change occurs when societies borrow cultural traits
Why are societies at similar or different levels of evolution
and development?
Unilineal Evolution: Edward B. Tylor
- Societies evolve in a single direction toward complexity,
progress, and civilization
- Savagery (hunter-gatherers, horticultural)  Barbrism
(?)  Civilization
- However, cultures do not follow this formula;
cultures evolve in its own time
- Human beings are innately rational – they are continuously
improving their societies
- Categorized based on technology, family, economy,
political organization, art, religion, and philosophy
- Most primitive religion: polytheistic – animism (spirit),
paganism
Modern societies: monotheistic
- Philosophy of older cultures: for communal good
Modern societies: individuality (e.g., individual rights –
gay rights, environmental rights, women’s rights)
Unilineal Evolution: Lewis Henry Morgan
- Native American
*MISSING*
Evolution of the family (stages)
1. Humans originally lived in primitive hordes in which
sexual behavior was not regulated and individuals didn’t
know who their fathers were
- Hawaiians – use one general term to classify their
father and all other male relatives
2. Brother-sister marriage soon developed
3. Group marriage
- In some African tribes, there are mating seasons
4. Matriarchal family structure
- Women held economic and political power
- Property is transferred from mother to daughter
5. Patriarchal
- Most evolved – because anthropologists were white
who lived in patriarchal societies
- Males took control of the economic and political
structure
B. Diffusionism
Why are societies at similar or different levels of evolution and
development?
from one another: cultural knowledge, technology
economic ideas, religious views, and art
British Diffusionism: G. Elliot Smith and William J. Perry
- Assumption: everything came from Egypt (because it was
THAT powerful
- All aspects of civilization originated in Egypt and diffused
to other cultural areas
- E.g. Jesus – influenced by Horus
Mother Mary – Isis god of Babylonia
- How about other cultures that had no borrowings from
Egypt? Ethnocentric answer – some cultures simply
became degenerate and had forgotten the original ideas
borrowed from Egypt
- Most common methods: through conquering, trade
- Religion – parallelism (connecting
qualities/characteristics of the ancient gods to jesus’)
German Diffusionism: Father Wilhelm Schmidt
- Kulturkreise (culture circles)
- Several early centers of civilization had existed and that
from these early centers cultural traits diffused outward in
circles to other regions
- Criticisms:
- Underestimated human
*MISSING*
C. Structuralism
Claude Levi-Strauss
- Binary oppositions continue the self-sufficient structure
- Food: cooked or raw, nature or culture
- It argued that human culture may be understood by means
of a structure–modeled on language (i.e., structural
linguistics)–that differs from concrete reality and abstract
ideas
- E.g. Ihaw – masculine
Black and white/dark and light – constant throughout
all cultures (has their own versins)
 Structuralism – only 1 truth: there is a formula applicable to
ALL cultures
- Science can be structuralists; tyler and morgan
 Post-structuralism – multiple perspectives/truths: there is
no such thing as structure in cultures; everyone has their
own way of doing/understanding things
 - Accept, tolerate, to each their own
 Post-modernism – truth, knowledge
- Irony: going back to structuralists – cancel culture:
“you should get rid of old beliefs!” “males suck;
women rights!”
- Blending, adapt
D. Functionalism
- Is the view that society consist of institutions that serve
vital purpose for people
- Relationship of institutions and how these institutions
function to serve society or the individual
- Division of 2 groups: agency vs structure
Structural-Functionalism: Radcliffe Brown
- Africa and Andaman Islands
- Institutions function to perpetuate the survival of society
- Society’s economic, political, religious, and social
institutions serve to integrate society as a whole
- Exogamous marriages – norms, obligations, and duties
serve to promote stability and order
Psychological Functionalism: Malinowski
- How society functions to serve the individual’s interests
- Trobriand Islands (Papua New Guinea) – how cultural
norms are used to satisfy individual needs
- Magic. Fishing in enclosed lagoons and safe areas,
fishermen relied on their skills. In the open sea where it is
more dangerous and unpredictable, they relief on magical
beliefs
- Praying before fishing in the ocean
- Risk men are willing to take, only if they do the
ritual
- Other example: kissing mother mary/roasary before
driving
- Includes a system of beliefs concerning death, the afterlife,
sickness, and health
- Keeps people going kahit walang sure sense
Evolutionism (20th century)
Neoevolutionist: Leslie White
- Societies (sociocultural systems) evolved in relation to the
amount of energy captured and used by each member of
society
E. Transactionalism
- Theory first advanced by Frederick Bart in 1959 to consider
social processes and interactions
- Individuals are viewed as self-interested actors wiching to
get the best value in exchange relationships. Individuals are
thereby characterized as autonomous and independent
(essentially non-social beings)
- A farmer doesn’t have the philosophy to feed the filipino
people; he farms because he has to feed his family
- Every social interaction is not social, it’s a basis for goods
(either psychologically, emotionally)
F. Processualism
- The study of social structures and cultures by analyzing and
comparing their processes and methodologies
- If there are multiple steps/components in a
product/procedure, it is more modern
- Scissors vs sebo de macho example
- Before: education – being taught how to make tools
Now – going to school, and everythig
G. Marxism
H. Cultural Materialism
Marvin Harris
- Focuses on technology, environment, and economic factors
as key determinants in sociocultural evolution
- Infrstructure, structure, superstructure
- Before: environment with limited protein that led to the
belief that consuming more meat will make them stronger
9/18/2020
Gift giving
- Mauss: gift giving existed during the earliest of times until
now; however now, it is purely a transactional reality (e.g.,
grocery)
- Wala nang connection/social relationship
- Origin of economics
- Suki – giving of lesser price
- Relates to Mauss’ concept of gift giving
Marcel Mauss (1872-1950)
The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies
Gift
- To create bonds, universal act of friendship
- Colonizers: instinctively always start with gift giving
A comparative study of the institution of the gift in different primitive
and archaic cultures
2 importance:
1. Logically structured communication system
- Way of communicating that we’re friends
2. Total social phenomenon in anthropological theory: the
concept of a multidimensional phenomenon which is at the
same time economical, juridical, moral, religious,
mythological, and esthetical
- Everything is interconnected
- Applicable doon sa story ni sir about kay sam (one on
one teaching lol)
Mauss: old people giving something to someones sacrifices a part of
himself
- “Í give something to you because it means someonthing to
me”
- E.g., natives to colonizers when they arrived in the country
- modern people always want to makalamang
- “I will give you a necklace for 1000acres of land”
- Indigineous people don’t have the concept of
lamangan – perceived the necklace to be valuable to
the white person
- Naging ganito lang because of modern society
- always search for a convertional value (e.g., exchange gift)
- don’t care if the recipient doesn’t like the gift, basta
dapat pasok sa 500php
- in order for a person to maintain power (ego), the gift must
be reciprocated (or dagdagan in value)
- e.g., paying for the bill in the restaurant
- transaction: paying for everyone to know na
you’re a good guy
- that’s why you should never gift to datus – asserting
power over the datu
- makes the datu indebted to you
- purpose: cohesion – our tribes would never fight kasi may
cycle na one owes another
- structure: maintains order
 - the economical importance of the gift and its role in ancient
societies
- hidden and covered under a number of symbolisms
- today, we can notice this function of the gift when a young
couple gets married
- today, our society survive a lot of aspects of the gift; they
are only adapted to the new situation and they do not play a
central role
- this role is now played by the free – the result of the social
evolution from the stage of exchange to the stage of the free
market

A. Simple truth – all societies gifts which are supposed to be

given voluntarily, are actually obligatory
B. All social phenomena are connected with each other;
therefore they are total, and all kinds of institutions are
expressed through them
C. The gift is only part of this social whole – in archaic
societies, a gift must be paid back, otherwise this whole is C Wright Mills
broken - Like the classical theory of the discipline, Mill’s vision is a
holistic view of entire sociocultural systems, this systems is
- the person holding the gift should feel uncomfortable interdependent, and it has profound effects on human
(cycle) values, thought, and behavior

Rationalization
09/25/2020 putangina 10:30 ako pumasok 10am pala yung class
- As a student of Max Weber, Mills’ main body of work
ajhshahsahuhuh
center upon the theme of rationalization
- Practical application of knowledge to achieve a desired end
- Its goal is efficiency, its means are total coordination and
control over the social processes needed to attain that goal
- It is the guiding principle behind bureaucracy and the
increasing division of labor

Basic Assumptions
- Human beings cannot be understood apart from the social
and historical structures in which they are formed and in
which they interact
- While human beings are motivated by the norms, values,
and belief systems that prevail in their society, structural
change often throw these “vocabularies of motivation” into
some confusion
Sociological Perspective – numbers, data - The number and variety of structural changes within a
- identifying first the who, then the why (sociological society increase as institutions become larger, more
imagination) embracing, and more interconnected
- e.g., Berge – who drops out? The poor - Consequently, the tempo of change has sped up appreciably
Mills – why? Economy, education, politics\ in the modern era, and the changes have become far more
- descriptive lang consequential for all – for those who are in control of these
enlarged organizations, and for those who are subject to
Sociological Imagination them
- the explanation to the who? - The reason why common-sense explanation to why we do
- Discusses the domino effect the things we do has become blurred and confusing
- More qualitative, more bigger context - Common sense answer: Filipinos think being poor is
caused by being lazy – we were brainwashed before
(colonialism)
E.g., - Mills doesn’t like this !
Berger: ~1% of drugs controlled
Mills: maybe the people aren’t the problem The Sociological Imagination
- Sociological research has come to be guided more by the
requirements of administrative concerns than by intellectual
concerns
- It has become the accumulation of facts for the purpose of
facilitating administrative decisions
- Very much like saying that saying research is focused too
much on application and human use
- It should also be about intellectual pursuits
 - For mills, the difference between effective sociological
thought and that which fails rested upon imagination
- The sociological imagination is simply a “quality of mind”
that allows one to grasp “history and biography and the
relations between the two within society”
- To truly fulfill the promise of social science requires us to
focus upon substantive problems, and to relate these
problems to structural and historical features of the
sociocultural system
- These features have meanings for individuals, and they
profoundly affect the values, character, and the behavior of
the men and women who make up the sociocultural system
Evils of the industrial revolution
Alienated from: (what capitalism does to laborers)
If Berger’s perspective – who’s more likely to destroy the
environment, Catholic or Muslim?
Mills’ perspective – why do we become nature-ruining people? Lol
Radcliffe-Brown
10/30/2020
Karl Marx
- A lot of his ideas are teleological and determinist
- Influenced by Hagel:
1. Ultimately ma will share the realm of the absolute
spirit. This world is not the totality.
2. Dialectic (discourse) – thesis comes into conflict with
anti-thesis, resolves to a synthesis
Hegel espoused:
A. Thesis – nature is good, beautiful
B. Antithesis – storms, calamities, eclipses = nature becomes
the cause of fear
C. Synthesis – there are attempts to make nature more regular
– to control nature. For Hagel, this is the beginning of
religion.
- Earliest form of religious expression – tries to control
nature or appease the gods (i.e., Gods, Odin, Zeus)
- Eventually appeasing gods become more complex as
religion becomes more organized
- Synthesis becomes the new thesis in the net generation,
where a new antithesis would be made (cycle)
- Higher and higher until you reach the high realm of
spirit/absolute spirit
A. Alienation – the estrangement of labor
- For man, the object of labor is to promote life
- Man does not simply work out of instinct like the rest of the
animals
- Man is able to take pride in the work they do, there is
something of him in his product
- an agreement that a slave has a duty to the master, while the
master has a duty to his slave rin – slaves r family
members, sort of like an orphan : D
- capitalists don’t have this contract
- What separates man as a species – uplifts his
spirit/humanity
1. From the product of labour – there is no connection/pride to
the end product; instead of you controlling your work, your
work controls you
2. From his own labour activity – labour becomes suffering
instead of gratifying (creative process)
3. From his very humanity – he starts behaving like a creature
4. From other men – no meaningful interaction in the
assembly line
- The result of man’s estrangement/alienation is the
strengthening of private property, classes