Anthropology tricks that make cultural theory stick

Four fields: CALC — Cultural, Archaeology, Linguistic, and biological (physical). American anthropology covers all four. C=Cultural, A=Archaeology, L=Linguistic, C=biological (physical).

CulturalEthnography, kinship, religion, economics

ArchaeologyMaterial culture, past societies

LinguisticLanguage, communication, meaning

BiologicalEvolution, primatology, osteology

Cultural relativism: understand practices within their own context before judging. Boas's core principle.

Cultural Relativism — Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict: cultural practices must be understood within their cultural context, not judged by outside standards. Methodological relativism (how to study) vs moral relativism (whether to judge). Ethnocentrism: judging others by your own cultural standards — the bias anthropology works to overcome. Cultural relativism does not mean all practices are equally ethical.

Ethnography: participant observation — live with the group, learn by doing. Malinowski pioneered it in Trobriand Islands.

Participant Observation — Ethnographers immerse in a community for months or years — learn language, participate in daily life, conduct interviews. Malinowski (1922, Argonauts of the Western Pacific): set the standard. Key concepts: key informants, thick description (Geertz — interpret meaning, not just behavior), emic (insider) vs etic (outsider) perspectives. Reflexivity: acknowledge how the researcher affects the data.

Kinship: descent (patrilineal / matrilineal / bilateral) + marriage rules (exogamy / endogamy)

PatrilinealThrough father — property, name pass patrilineally

MatrilinealThrough mother — Navajo, Hopi, many W. African

BilateralBoth sides — most Western societies

ExogamyMust marry outside group

EndogamyMust marry within group

Rites of passage: Separation → Liminality → Incorporation (Van Gennep, 1909)

SeparationLeaves old status — symbolically "dies"

LiminalityIn-between — no status, often sacred/dangerous

IncorporationRejoins with new recognized identity

Totem: symbol reinforcing group identity. Taboo: prohibited behavior. Incest taboo is universal across all cultures.

Totems and Taboos — Totem: animal, plant, or object symbolizing a clan — reinforces shared identity and prohibitions (clans often cannot eat their totem). Taboo (from Tongan "tapu"): prohibited behavior with social/supernatural consequences. The incest taboo (prohibition on sex/marriage with close kin) is the only universal cultural rule. Freud: psychoanalytic explanation. Lévi-Strauss: incest taboo forces exogamy → social alliances.

Exchange modes: Reciprocity (gift), Redistribution (chief collects/gives), Market (price/profit)

Modes of Exchange — Generalized reciprocity: giving without expectation of return (parents to children, Kula ring). Balanced reciprocity: equal exchange expected. Negative reciprocity: try to get more than you give (market haggling). Redistribution: goods flow to central authority (chief, state) and redistributed (potlatch, taxes). Market exchange: impersonal, price-based. Polanyi: formal economics can't explain non-market economies.

Structural functionalism: every cultural practice serves a social function that maintains the whole system.

Structural Functionalism — Radcliffe-Brown: society as organism — every institution maintains social structure. Malinowski: every custom meets a human need. Criticism: too conservative (explains why things stay the same), ignores change, conflict, and history. Lévi-Strauss's structuralism: deeper mental structures underlie all cultural phenomena (myths, kinship rules, cuisine). Post-structuralism: Derrida, Foucault — power, discourse, deconstruction.

Religion: sacred vs profane (Durkheim). Ritual creates community. Shamanism: specialist mediates between worlds.

Anthropology of Religion — Durkheim: religion reinforces social solidarity — sacred/profane distinction marks off special domains. Malinowski: religion addresses anxiety about death and the unknown. Weber: religion can drive social change (Protestant Ethic → capitalism). Tylor's animism: belief in spirits as origin of religion. Shamanism: cross-cultural pattern of spirit communication, healing, trance. Ritual: repeated symbolic action that transforms participants.

Sex = biological. Gender = cultural construction. Margaret Mead: gender roles vary dramatically across cultures.

Sex vs Gender — Margaret Mead (Coming of Age in Samoa, 1928; Sex and Temperament, 1935): documented dramatic cross-cultural variation in gender roles — challenged biological determinism. Sex: biological (chromosomes, anatomy). Gender: cultural meanings assigned to sexed bodies. Third genders recognized in many societies (hijra in South Asia, two-spirit in many Indigenous North American cultures, fa'afafine in Samoa). Butler: gender as performance.

Globalization: cultural homogenization vs hybridity. "McDonaldization" vs local adaptation and creolization.

Globalization and Cultural Change — Cultural imperialism thesis: Western (esp. American) culture erases local diversity — McDonaldization (Ritzer), Coca-colonization. Hybridity/creolization: local cultures actively adapt and transform global influences — result is something new, not simple replacement. Appadurai's scapes: ethnoscapes (people), mediascapes (media), technoscapes, financescapes, ideoscapes flow globally but unevenly. Diaspora: communities maintaining culture far from homeland.

Applied anthropology: use anthropological knowledge to solve real-world problems — health, development, policy, business.

Applied and Public Anthropology — Medical anthropology: culture and health — why patients don't take medications, traditional healing, disease stigma. Development anthropology: why top-down aid projects fail, community-based approaches. Cultural resource management (CRM): largest employer of archaeologists — survey before construction. Corporate anthropology: ethnographic methods for UX (user experience) research, consumer behavior (Intel, IDEO). Forensic anthropology: skeletal identification for law enforcement and human rights investigations.