ANT101

Introduction to Anthropology
Fall 2021

Topic 1: Introduction,What is anthropology? Its scope?

Why study anthropology? The four sub-fields

Dr. Moiyen Zalal Chowdhury

Assistant Professor, ESS
moiyen.chowdhury@bracu.ac.bd
Contents ANT101 Fall 2021

Lecture 1.1: Introduction

Symbolic anthropology ANT302 Summer 2020

Symbolic anthropologists approached cultures as shared systems

of meaning (like the structuralists), but they did not believe that
such systems could be ‘modeled.’

They believed that people use shared symbols and meanings to

construct their social realities, and their task was to unearth,
through the interpretation of symbols, how people made sense of
their lives and worlds.

Lecture 1.1: Mary Douglas (Part 1)

Symbolic anthropology ANT302 Summer 2020

The lack of a systematic methodology of interpretation made the

credibility of analysis and the ability to derive general theoretical
insights contingent on the scholar.

Both Mary Douglas and Victor Turner inherited British structural-

functionalism’s focus on social cohesion and solidarity, which
they believed were produced through shared symbols, derived
from common lived experiences.

Mary Douglas was especially influenced by Durkheim, and his

emphasis on the symbolic expression of social relations and
order. Lecture 1.1: Mary Douglas (Part 1)
The body and the power in its margins ANT302 Summer 2020

Mary Douglas’ most influential work was on the cultural

construction of purity and pollution, which she believed to be a
universal symbolic pattern that was used to represent social order;
she attempts to show this through cross-cultural analysis in her
seminal work Purity and Danger (1966).

For Douglas, the most potent symbols are drawn from the most
intimate but common experiences, such as the bodily. For her, the
human body becomes among the most powerful symbols of
society.
Lecture 1.1: Mary Douglas (Part 1)
The body and the power in its margins ANT302 Summer 2020

Douglas argued that the body is an inherently powerful model for

complex structures with vulnerable boundaries.

Note that this is not the ‘organicism’ of evolutionists. Douglas is

not saying that society can be treated as if it is a body/organism,
but that people symbolize it as such as they attempt to make sense
of it.

Douglas notes that across the world, bodily products are symbols
of danger and power. Ritual initiation often involves the
shedding of blood, incest, anthropophagy etc., while power was
often thought to resideLecture
in bodily margins; why would this be so?
1.1: Mary Douglas (Part 1)
 ANT302 Summer 2020

Thank you

Lecture 1.1: Mary Douglas (Part 1)