ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORIES
Exam 1 - Reviewer
THE POLITICIZATION OF CULTURE
Culture
● Declared one of the two/three most
complicated words in English language
● Explores the occurrences of the definitions
of culture over time
○ Treat the prominence of “culture” as
a cultural phenomenon
○ Introduce “culture” into the
discourse of many fields
● Anthropologists as the ones to establish the
legitimized definition of “culture” amidst
mainstream use
Old Meaning of Culture
● E.B. Tylor’s Definition
○ “Complex whole which includes
knowledge, belief, art, morals, law,
custom, and any other capabilities
and habits acquired by man as a
member of society”
● Boas rejected Tylor’s definition
○ Argued the particularity of cultures
from environmental response
● Anthropologists differed in theories, but
shared common idea that the world is made
up of people, each with culture
● Believed that societies were unchanging
○ Prominence of colonialism and
nation state, international
capitalism, agencies
● How would social transformation occur?
Main Features of Old Meaning of Culture
● Bounded, small scale entity
● Defined characteristics (checklist)
● Unchanging, in balanced equilibrium or
self-reproducing
● Underlying system of shared meanings:
“authentic culture”
● Identical and homogeneous individuals
New Meaning of Culture
● “Cultural identities are not inherent,
bounded or static: they are dynamic, fluid,
and constructed situationally.”
○ Always negotiable and under the
process of endorsement
● Contests across asymmetrical relations of
power to define
● Symbols and ideas never acquired a closed
or entirely coherent set of meanings
○ Polyvalent, fluid, and hybridized
● Contested process of meaning-making
● Three stages in contested meaning-making
1. Overt attempts by identified agents
to redefine key symbols
2. View of the world becomes
institutionalized and works through
non-agentive power
3. Carry new ways of thinking about
one aspect of life - diffused and
prevalent in everyday life
Three Fields where Culture is Deployed
1. Cultural Racism
2. Corporate Culture
3. Culture and Development
Cultural Racism
● New Right - alliance between liberal
economic and conservative politics
● “Ideology becomes hegemonic not only
through the institutions of state but by being
diffused through all areas of everyday life”
○ Not just political, but also cultural
interventions to manipulate
● World is not a mosaic of discrete cultures
○ Rise of migration and diaspora =
populations with multifaceted
differences
● Nation and cultures are historical
constituted, not biologically or ontologically
○ Includes characteristic activities
and interests of people
○ “Whole way of life” - not only
concerned with sports, food, art
● Expressed sense of threat - being swamped
by alien cultures that would dilute
exclusiveness
● Redefined race
○ Feeling of loyalty to people of
“one's own kind”
○ Race as a moral and noble idea
ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORIES
Exam 1 - Reviewer
Corporate Culture
● Excellent company = strong culture
● Close relationship between academic
research on organizations and thinking of
practicing managers
○ Researchers playing central role in
“making” organizations
● Old culture in corporations
○ Bounded entity with a fixed identity
○ Checklist of characteristics
deployed in centralized system of
command and control
● New culture in corporations
○ Company adaptability to stay
competitive
○ Redevelopment of products, sites
of production, employees, and
corporate relationships
○ Operate across boundaries and
rapidly reform in new
circumstances
○ Differently positioned actors -
attractive to corporate managers
○ Decentralization from hierarchy
● “Culture is something an organization has,
rather than an organization is”
Culture and Development
● Culture in overseas development
● Example 1: UNESCO
○ Vision for a new ethical world
order, mapping out a world made
of cultures as discrete entities
○ Culture is not just one domain of
life, but is constructive, constitutive,
and creative in all aspects
○ View on cultural diversity -
distinctiveness should be
encouraged
○ Human civilization depends on
creative diversity
○ Cultural diversity must be
protected by a code of global ethics
○ UNESCO’s vision of code of global
ethics - respecting all cultural
values and making value
judgments about acceptable and
unacceptable diversity
● Example 2: Kayapo Leaders
○ Fieldwork in Brazil
○ 700-800 members died of disease
○ Kayapo felt dependent, no control
○ Role of Anthropologists - “Uncover
authentic social and cultural
system beneath the corrosive
underlay”
○ Culture as Strategy - created new
culture, choreographed themselves
to gain western support
○ Kayapo defined culture for
themselves and used it to set their
terms with the outside world
INTRODUCTION TO
ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORIES
Foundations of Anthropology
● Explain relationship of society and culture
(ideas, symbols, and interpretations)
● Definition of Society - Group of people
working together
Five Important Early Anthropological Theories
1. Unilinear Cultural Evolution
2. Diffusion
3. Historical Particularism
4. Functionalism
5. Structural Functionalism
Introduction to Evolutionalism
● Development of society
● Not to be confused with the evolution of
human beings - Biological Anthropology
● Dominated middle of 19th century
● Overthrown by Historical Particularism and
Structural Functionalism
● School of thought by E.B. Tyler and Henry
Lewis Morgan
○ Tylor - Anthropology of Religion
○ Morgan - Universal Aspect of
Culture
● Explain adaptations in world culture
● Believed all species passed through an
evolutionary process
Early Controversies
1. Ethnocentrism
2. Tendency to Speculate
3. Assumed all Cultures Went Through Same
Evolutionary Process
ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORIES
Exam 1 - Reviewer
Ethnocentrism
● Standard - Victorian England culture
○ Not comparable = Barbaric
○ Evolution Convoluted in England
and Europe
● Cultural Relativism - judge based on the
standards of the culture
○ “May be true to you, but not me”
● Example: Male and Female Circumcision
○ Cultural, not biological
○ FGM - Stage to womanhood for
Filipino Muslims and Africans
○ Practice of consent still as lens of
protection
Tendency to Speculate
● Early anthropologists had no fieldwork
● Fieldwork
○ Fieldwork only started with
Malinovski studying Polynesia
○ Intention: View economic functions
of traditions
○ Building alliances beyond economic
functions
● Armchair Speculation
○ Approach that did not involve
primary research, data collection
○ Analyzed and synthesized existing
scholarships
○ Focused on comparative methods &
taxonomic divisions
● Fieldnotes - important notes of observations
usually in bullet points
● Field Diary - detailed experience day to day
○ Malinovski cursing at respondents,
not cooperative, no understanding
● Participant Observation (PO)
○ Researchers immerse day-to-day
activities with respondents
○ Experience their traditions as
anthropologists
○ “If you want to learn, join your
respondents”
○ Provides rapport to respondents
● No fieldwork in Evolutionism
Assumed All Cultures Went Through Same
Evolutionary Process
● Assumes there’s always progress in timeline
● Not all societies reach “inevitable” progress
○ Some areas still have no electricity,
roads, doctors, and homes
Key Figures in Evolution
1. E.B. Tylor
2. Henry Lewis Morgan
3. Herbert Spencer
E.B. Tylor (1832-1917)
● Defined old meaning of culture
○ “Complex whole which includes
knowledge, belief, art, words, law,
custom and any other capabilities
and habits required by man as a
member of society”
● Critiqued for seeing culture as static
○ Society creates culture
○ Man creates cultural progress
○ Examples: beauty standards,
seasonal fashion statements
○ Culture is not permanent
● Specialized in depreciative culture
● Anthropological focus on religion
○ Animism to Polytheism to
Monotheism
○ Philippine Religious Landscape:
combination of monotheism and
polytheism (IPs and ethnic groups)
● Believed that society goes through three
stages of development
Society’s Three Stages of Development
1. Savagery
● Nomads - people had no concept of
residential permanence
● No concept of private property
● Moved locations often
2. Barbanism
● Hunting as subsistence
● Development of horticulture
● Domesticated plants and animals
● Sedentary living
3. Civilization
● Only achieved by Victorian England
and European states
● Introduced concept of government
● Complex management of resources
● Consciousness of society
ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORIES
Exam 1 - Reviewer
Henry Lewis Morgan (1818-1881)
● Same school of thought with E.B. Tylor
● Agrees with E.B. Tylor’s states of
development but added laters
○ Presence of upper, middle and
lower levels of each stage
○ Shift from lower to upper when
introduced new technology
Morgan’s Additional Layers to Society’s Three
Stages of Development
1. Savagery
a. Lower - Fruits and nuts
b. Middle - Fire, fishing technology
c. Upper - Bow and arrow
2. Barbanism
a. Lower - Pottery making for storage,
cooking, secondary burial
b. Middle - Domestication of plants
and animals, irrigation system
c. Upper - Utilization of iron and
stone tools for hunting
3. Civilization
a. Phonetic alphabet and writing,
standard for civilization dictated by
the English (Victorian England)
Herbert Spencer (1820-1903)
● Anthropologist and sociologist
● Coined the term “survival of the fittest”
● Introduced Social Darwinism
○ Charles Darwin - Examined how
unicellular become multicellular,
natural selection, adaptation
○ Henry Spencer - Understanding
how society evolved from simple to
complex structures
● All societies are considered primitive other
than European states
○ Primitive men = “Small Brain”
ANTHROPOLOGY AND MARXISM
Karl Marx
● German philosopher, economist, political
theorist, historian, sociologist, journalist, and
revolutionary socialist
● Wrote the “Communist Manifesto” with
Friedrich Engels and “Das Kapital”
● Believed in two competing social classes
1. Proletarian
● Working class
2. Bourgeoisie
● Elite or wealthy, controls
production, possesses
economic power
● Competing for limited resources - scarcity
○ Proletariats - less resources
○ Bourgeoisie - more resources
Capitalism
● An economic and political system
● Focus on mode, means, and relations of
production and industrialization
○ Mode - Specific way society is
organized to produce goods
○ Means - Process and resources
used to produce goods
● Commodities - Poods, services, factories,
capital, money
○ Goods - Tangible
○ Services - Labor
● Industrialization - Creation of steam engine
● “Das Kapital” - dispute between rich & poor
Labor Theory of Value
● Value of commodity = Number of hours to
produce it
● More taxing labor = Higher pay
● Example: Goods of farmers are not
appropriated properly for months of labor
● Relation to capitalism
○ Money to middle man, not laborers
○ Farmers do not receive the income
Class Consciousness
● Awareness of social class
● Proletariats are of their exploitation
ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORIES
Exam 1 - Reviewer
False Consciousness
● Proletariats accept their fates as bottom of
the social hierarchy
● No more resistance to bourgeoisie
Economic Power
● Control over the means of production
● Held by the bourgeoisie
Four Main Areas of Study in Marxism
1. Economic Power
2. Materialism vs. Spirituality
3. Class conflict
4. Art, Literature and Ideology
Economic Power
● Possessed by bourgeoisie
● Owners and controllers of production
Materialism vs. Spirituality
● Abolishment of religion and family
● Communism
○ For all - shared by everyone
○ No concept of ownership
● Family - Source of all evil and greed
● Religion
○ Opium of humanity
○ Hinders development
○ Example: Health and Religion -
controversy with planned
parenthood and assistance to
teenage pregnancy cases
● Calvinism - favored by God through one’s
resources
Class Conflict
● Proletariats vs. Bourgeoisie
● Marx’s solution: achieve classless society
with the integration of technology
Art, Literature, and Ideology
● Critique of Marx: Who is represented?
Whose voice is talking?
● Nancy Drew analogy: pocket books vs.
international mystery novels
○ Who is cultured and not?
EARLY FRENCH SOCIAL THEORY
Structuralism and Structural Functionalism
● Structuralism
○ Theory that interprets society
through relationships with the
broader system
● Structural Functionalism
○ Theory that views society as a
complex system whose parts work
together to promote stability
○ Each part plays a specific function
● Emerged in various disciplines - Philosophy,
Linguistics, Literature
Claude Levi-Strauss (1908-2009)
● Father of structuralism
● French philosopher, social scientist,
founding father of anthropology
● Focused on how humans were different
from other another
○ All Filipinos but different
perspectives (Urban vs. Rural)
● Cultural environment influences differences
and similarities
● Went to the Amazons to study culture
● Most of his research was based on
ethnographic research done by other people
○ Did very limited fieldwork in Brazil
(1930)
● Challenged concept of positivism and
empirical positivist perspective
○ Positivism - Every assertion can be
scientifically verified or proven
logical through evidence
● Believed culture is comparable to language
○ Logical structure and signs: culture
● Contributed to structuralism
○ Introduced works through books
“The Savage Man” and “Race and
Ethnicity”
● One can’t focus on surface structure alone,
must involve deep structures
Levi-Strauss’s Approach
● Focus on the idea of language
● Interested in finding universal structures
○ Though different, we operate the
same way at deep levels
ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORIES
Exam 1 - Reviewer
Deep Culture - meaning produced in culture
Signification - signs, symbols, language, and
meaningful research
Language
● Method to communicate
● Verbal - spoken through sounds
● Non-verbal - signs, body language
● New meaning is produced through
signification
● All cultural phenomena occur with language
○ Stories, myths, rituals, kinship, food
“Culture is a collection of arbitrary sounds”
Phonemes
● Arbitrary units of sound with no meaning
● Combine sounds to form meaning
● Can only be meaningful if combined with a
certain pattern
● Built on contrasts between sounds
● Language is not concerned with its meaning
○ Determining patterned way on how
patterns exist in overall system
Binary Oppositions
● Linguistic analogy: culture is comparable to
language
● Fundamental structure: pair of opposites
○ Example: black and white, rich or
poor, men or women, thin or fat
● Building blocks of meaning
● Human mind operates on contrasts
(cognition and thought process)
● No gray areas or spectrums
● Must be one or the other
● Makes problems in meaning
● Lack of liminality
○ Liminality - in betweens, quality of
ambiguity
Structure
● Underlying principles of social life
● Deep struggle - various underlying
principles of behavior
● Can be found in the mind, not in ground
social relations
Areas of Study with Structures
1. Classification Systems
2. Kinship - bilateral, matrilineal
3. Myth - various alamats and folklore
Role of Anthropologists
1. Descriptive linguistic anthropology
2. Look beyond the individual, see structures
HISTORICAL PARTICULARISM
Historical Particularism
● All have their own historical development
● Culture is specific
● Forwarded by Franz Boas
● Critique of Evolutionary Theory
○ Not all cultures undergo the same
stages of development
● History as critical methods of cultural
analysis
○ Not all culture have the same
standards - consider background
○ Need for ethnographic fieldwork
○ Importance of history - presence of
history in everyday life
○ Example: Beauty standards as a
reflection of colonial past
Role of Anthropologists
● Trace historical development of culture
rather than construct
Ethnography
● Both a method and product
○ Method - Particular observation
● Get particulars from raw data over theory
Franz Boas (1858-1942)
● Father of U.S. Anthropology
● Conducted research on Kwakiutl of the
Pacific Northwest between 1880-1920
● Introduced the idea of relativism
○ Relativism - judge based on the
standards of others
○ We are separated by culture
○ Incomparable to others
ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORIES
Exam 1 - Reviewer
○ Culture is something certain people
practice - not inherent, biological,
and reducible
○ Culture is a product of its own
historical development
○ Universal law does not exist
Assumptions of Historical Particularism
● Rejects general laws
○ Ranking concepts of progress
(Savagery, Barbarism, etc.)
● No simple or complex societies
● Unilinear evolution is ethnocentric
● Not culture, but cultures
● Race does not dictate behavior, culture does
Boasian Concepts of Culture
1. Superorganic
2. Unconscious
3. Adaptive
Superorganic
● Product of collective or group life
● Individual has influence on culture
Unconscious
● Filter through which reality is perceived
● Not the object of attention
Adaptive
● Culture helps individuals adapt to their
environment
Alfred Kroeber
● Follower of Franz Boas
● Same line of thought with anthropologist
○ History must be taken into account
when discussing culture
Concepts of Alfred Kroeber
1. Culture as Superorganic
2. Suprarindividual
3. Deterministic
Culture as Superorganic
● Culture exists outside the people
● Forces us to confirm the patterns
● Culture plays determining role in human
behavior
● Individuals have little impact on cultural
development and change
● Culture has the power to limit our choices
Supraindividual
● Culture is greater than the individual
● Forces us to conform to patterns of behavior
○ Conformity to norms
● No choice but to conform to norms
Deterministic
● Events are caused by the things that
happened before them
● Humans do not have the choice to change
the past or control the future
Method for Studying Culture
● Boas’ vouch for idiographic approach
○ Idiographic approach - deal with
the particular or specific cases
● Alternative to study of culture instead of
generalized or comparative approaches
● Conduct detailed study of customs in
relation
Critique of Elements of Survey Approach
● Reduces culture into bits and pieces
● Assume elements have same meaning
across cultures
● Assigns equal significance
● Must distinguish culture and society
○ Society - Group life
○ Culture - Way of life
Culture and Personality
Culture and Personality
● Psychological Anthropology
○ Role of culture in the formation of
personalities
○ Ecocultural - Psych, Eco, Cultural
● Influenced by Neofreudian framework
○ Framework of psychoanalytic
theory
○ Forwarded by Sigmaund Freud
● Components of personality
1. Id - Pleasure, Instincts, No reality
2. Superego - Morality, Conscience
3. Ego - Reality, Executor of Action
ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORIES
Exam 1 - Reviewer
● Incorporates childhood experiences
○ Unresolved childhood conflicts lead
to future problems
○ All childhood upbringing are
different
● Representative personality through
psychological concepts
Socialization
● Where personality is made
● Idea of lifelong process as a member of
society
● Happens from birth until death
Interaction
● Process of socialization
● Results into borderless society with the
presence of technology
● Can now be digital with virtual access
Meaning and Determinants of Culture
● Old meaning of culture
○ Bounded, small-scale, identical,
homogenous, shared meaning =
question of authentic culture
● New meaning of culture
○ Dynamic, active process of meaning
making, Contestation of definitions,
argumentative on culture,
unbounded, idea that never formed
closed pull, outside influences
Meaning and Determinants of Personality
1. Environment
2. Hereditary
3. Culture
4. Peculiar Experiences
Environment
● Not limited to physical environment
● Adaptation to changing environment
● Close relationship between culture,
personality and environment
● Environment dictated cultural development
● Example: Mountaineers = Strong, clothing
for different types of environment, survival
Heredity
● Biological needs and capacities inherited
● Children tend to resemble their parents
● Example: twinning, career, appearance
Culture
● Impacted by lifelong socialization
● Socialization begins in the family
○ Mother, father, siblings, relatives
● Example: Religious practices of family
Peculiar Experiences
● Emphasizes ideas of childhood experiences
● Asian children - competitive but not
independent, collective family
Impact of Personality on Culture
● Personality configurations - national
personality types
○ How a specific culture affects
configurations
Frontrunners of Personality Research
1. Ruth Benedict
2. Margaret Mead
Ruth Benedict (1887-1948)
● Student of Franz Boas
● Focused on ethnographic fieldwork
● Conducted fieldwork in Southwest America
in Suni, Kwakuitl of North America
● Compared North and South personality
● “Patterns of Culture” 1984
○ Suni - Foraging societies - nomadic,
hunters and gathers
○ Kwakiutl - Agriculturalist societies
○ Suni possesses apollonian
personality - Emphasize discipline,
kindness, and peace achieved
through cooperation with society
○ Suni suppressed individuality
during childhood
○ Kwakiutl possesses dionysian
personality - aggressive,
competitive, achieve individuality,
prove superiority over others
○ Kwakiutl focused on a child’s
achievements
○ Kwakiutl had shamans that can
influence other people
○ Emphasis on patterns rather than
social contents
○ Analysis of culture requires
psychological approach
ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORIES
Exam 1 - Reviewer

● “Chrysanthemum and the Sword”

○ Studied Japanese culture through
the content analysis method
○ Focus on national character
○ Chrysanthemum - Socialization of
child during childhood, give needs
of the child
○ Japanese children trained to be
respectful - reflected in their adult
personalities
○ Sword - Adolescent period
○ Japanese adolescents experience
stringent discipline

Margaret Mead (1901-1978)

● Student of Ruth Benedict
● Considered historical context when studying
personality
● Coming of Age in Samoa (1949)
○ Compared Samoan with American
adolescent girls
○ Stressed on puberty on girls is
culturally determined
○ Samoans had an easier transition
from childhood to adolescence
○ Samoans were less emotional
○ Samoans could openly discuss
birth, death, and sex to parents
○ Adolescents not confronted with
conflicting standards of ethics and
values
○ Premarital sex was normal and not
emotionally tied
● “Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive
Societies” (1935)
○ Primitive societies from New
Zealand and the Pacific, former
colonies of America
○ Culture, personality, environment
○ Live in same area but different
personalities due to cultural
processes
○ Arapesh - Both are submissive
○ Mundugumur - Both are
aggressive, in conflict, struggling
○ Tschambuli - Male submissive,
female aggressive

Critique of Culture and Personality

● Childhood deterministic as socialization
does not happen outside the family