Survival international – npo that thinks about the welfare of uncontacted people

What’s wrong with leaving them uncontacted

Fuck Bolsonaro
Who knows where we’ll be in 20 years – will there even be any uncontacted humans left in
the world?

Culture : The great debatw

Cultural sociology is a main focus where as in anthro the interest in culture has declines
Debate about culture in anthro has been going on for years
20th century – anthros have used and developed the idea of culture to describe wht makes
people different to one another

Boas talked about culture and cultural relativism

Didn’t acc give a good definition
Stayed away from it but may of his students thought about the better version
Culture is connected and a shared collective – a patterning through emotional responses
Benedict wrote chrysanthemum and the sword – orientalist bitch
Maragret mead – talked about gender roles and society

Kroeber and kluckholn – book looks at the many different defintions of culture and
anthropology – came up with a list of 156 which summarised into 6 groupings – descriptive,
normative, historical, structural, psychological, and genetic
Genetic is what becomes culture – things we use like tools and language and how they
become culture
Culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit, of and for behaviour transmitted by
symbols, constitution the distinctive achievements of human groups including embodiemtns
in artefacts, the essential core of culture consists of traditional (historically derived and
selected) ideas and their attached values

60’s started questioning what culture meant to people

People have a model in their head which is learnt which they then mould themselves into

Lassiters definition builds up a process oriented definition based on negotiated meaning and
communication and also emphasising learning and practice

As globalisation began to be researched from the 90s

Critiques of culture]

Geertz
 - Peoples idea about their belonging to a certain group changes over time – he wanted
to move away from thinking about something that was static but instead was always
moving and making
- We make meaning in our lives through interations woth friends, family, religion,
things we vaklue and believe in

Culture seems to be used as a way to separate people and see what’s different between us,
it would be interesting to see how it could be used to show us how we’re similar; in a similar
way to Savab Paato showed us how with the links in Neanderthal DNA, that we aren’t as
different as one might assume. I do wonder if there’s a specific route for something to
follow in order for it to become culture ie tools or language. Are there specific
characteristics of things that are more likely to be culture than others?