Cultural anthropology is a branch of anthropology that focuses on the study of cultural variation among humans. This is in contrast to social anthropology, which views cultural variation as part of the anthropological constants.
Cultural anthropology has a rich methodology, including participant observation (often called fieldwork because it requires anthropologists to spend a long time at the study site), interviews, and surveys.
One of the earliest articulations of the anthropological meaning of the term "culture" comes from Sir Edward Tylor who wrote on the first page of his 1871 book: "Culture, or civilization, taken in its broad ethnographic sense, is a complex whole that includes knowledge, , art, morals, laws, customs, and other abilities and habits that human beings acquire as members of society. "The term" civilization "then gives way to the definition given by V. Gordon Childe, with a culture that shaped the terms umbrella and civilization into a kind culture.
The "cultural" anthropological concept reflects a partial reaction to the early Western discourse based on the opposition between "culture" and "nature", according to which some humans live in a "state of nature." Anthropologists argue that culture is a "human nature", and that everyone has the ability to classify experiences, encode symbolifications classically (ie in language), and teach such abstractions to others.
Because humans acquire culture through the process of enculturation learning and socialization, people living in different places or different circumstances develop different cultures. Anthropologists also point out that through culture people can adapt to their environment in non-genetic ways, so that people living in different environments will often have different cultures. Many anthropological theories have begun with appreciation and interest in the tension between local (cultural) and global (universal human nature, or network of connections between people in different places).
The emergence of cultural anthropology took place in the context of the late nineteenth century, when questions about which cultures were "primitive" and "civilized" occupied the minds not just Marx and Freud, but many others. Colonialism and its process increasingly brought European thinkers into direct or indirect contact with "other primitive people." The relative status of various humans, some of which have advanced modern technology including machines and telegraphs, while others have nothing but face-to-face communication techniques and still live the Paleolithic lifestyle, appealing to the first generation of cultural anthropologists.
In line with the rise of cultural anthropology in the United States, social anthropology, where sociality is central and focuses on the study of social status and the roles, groups, institutions, and relationships between them. - developed as an academic discipline in England and in France. The term socio-cultural anthropology of the umbrella refers to the tradition of cultural and social anthropology.
Video Cultural anthropology
Landasan teoritis
Kritik evolusionisme
Anthropology deals with the lives of people in different parts of the world, especially in relation to the discourse of beliefs and practices. In answering this question, the ethnologists of the nineteenth century were divided into two groups of thought. Some, like Grafton Elliot Smith, argue that different groups must have learned from each other, somehow, indirectly; in other words, they argue that cultural traits spread from one place to another, or "spread".
Other ethnologists argue that different groups have the ability to create the same beliefs and practices independently. Some of those who advocate "independent inventions", such as Lewis Henry Morgan, also suspect that equality means that different groups have passed the same stage of cultural evolution (see also classical social evolutionism). Morgan, in particular, recognizes that certain forms of society and culture are impossible to appear in the presence of others. For example, industrial agriculture can not be found before simple farming, and metallurgy can not be developed without prior non-smelting processes involving metals (such as simple land collection or mining). Morgan, like other nineteenth-century social evolutions, believes that there is more or less regular development from primitive to civilized.
20th-century anthropologists largely reject the notion that all human societies must pass the same stage in the same order, arguing that such an idea is incompatible with empirical facts. Some 20th century ethnologists, such as Julian Steward, have argued that such similarities reflect similar adaptations to similar environments. Although ethnologists of the nineteenth century saw "diffusion" and "independent discovery" as mutually exclusive and competing theories, most ethnographers quickly reached consensus that both processes took place, and both could make sense for cross-cultural similarities. But these ethnographers also point out the shallowness of many such similarities. They note that even traits that are diffused through diffusion are often given different meanings and functions from one society to another. The analysis of large human concentrations in large cities, in a multidisciplinary study by Ronald Daus, shows how new methods can be applied to human understanding living in a globalized world and how it is caused by the actions of the extra European countries, thereby highlighting the role of Ethics in anthropology modern.
Thus, most of these anthropologists show a lack of interest in comparing cultures, generalizations about human nature, or discovering the universal law of cultural development, rather than in understanding a particular culture in terms of culture itself. The ethnographer and the student promote the idea of ​​"cultural relativism", the view that one can only understand the beliefs and behaviors of others in the cultural context in which he lives or lives.
Others, such as Claude LÃÆ' © vi-Strauss (influenced by American cultural anthropology and by the French Durkheimian sociology), argue that similar patterns of development reflect fundamental similarities in the structure of human thought (see structuralism). By the mid-20th century, the number of examples of people who missed the stage, such as going from hunter-gatherer to post-industrial service work in one generation, so much that nineteenth-century evolutionism was effectively contradicted.
Cultural relativism
Cultural relativism was a principle defined as axiomatic in anthropological research by Franz Boas and later popularized by his disciples. Boas first articulated the idea in 1887: "... civilization is not something absolute, but... relative, and... our ideas and concepts are true only as far as our civilization." Although Boas did not trade the term, it became common among anthropologists after Boas's death in 1942, to express their synthesis of a number of ideas Boas had developed. Boaz believed that the cultural sweep, found in relation to any sub-species, was so widespread and widespread that there could be no connection between culture and race. Cultural relativism involves certain epistemological and methodological claims. Whether or not this claim requires a certain ethical stance is a matter of debate. This principle should not be equated with moral relativism.
Cultural relativism is partly a response to Western ethnocentrism. Ethnocentrism can take a clear form, in which one consciously believes that one's art is the most beautiful, the most virtuous, and the most true belief. Boas, originally trained in physics and geography, and strongly influenced by the thoughts of Kant, Herder, and von Humboldt, argues that one's culture can mediate and thereby limit the perception of a person in a less obvious way. This understanding of culture confronts anthropologists with two issues: first, how to escape from the unconscious ties of one's culture, which inevitably imply our perception and reaction to the world, and secondly, how to understand the unknown culture. The principle of cultural relativism forces anthropologists to develop innovative methods and heuristic strategies.
Boas and his students realize that if they do scientific research in other cultures, they need to use methods that will help them get out of their own ethnocentrism. One such method is ethnography: in essence, they advocate living with people from other cultures for long periods of time, so that they can learn local languages ​​and be inculturated, at least in part, into the culture. In this context, cultural relativism is a fundamental methodological interest, because it takes into account the importance of the local context in understanding the meaning of certain human beliefs and activities. Thus, in 1948 Virginia Heyer wrote, "Cultural relativity, to express it in the most obvious abstraction, expresses the relativity of that passage to the whole, which gains its cultural significance with its place as a whole, and can not maintain its integrity in a different situation. "
Theoretical approach
Maps Cultural anthropology
The basic thinker
Lewis Henry Morgan
Lewis Henry Morgan (1818-1881), a lawyer from Rochester, New York, became a supporter and ethnological scholar of Iroquois. His comparative analysis of religion, government, material culture, and in particular the familial pattern proves to be an influential contribution in the field of anthropology. Like other scholars of his day (such as Edward Tylor), Morgan argues that human society can be classified into categories of cultural evolution on a scale of development ranging from savage to barbarism to < i> civilization . Generally, Morgan uses technology (such as bowmaking or pottery) as an indicator of position on this scale.
Franz Boas, founder of the modern discipline
Franz Boas founded an academic anthropology in the United States contrary to Morgan's evolutionary perspective. The approach is empirical, skeptical of over-generalization, and avoids attempts to establish universal law. For example, Boas studies immigrant children to show that biological races do not change, and that human behaviors and behaviors are produced from parenting, not nature.
Influenced by the German tradition, Boas argues that the world is full of different cultures, rather than a society whose evolution can be measured by how much or little "civilization" they have. He believed that every culture should be studied in its specificity, and argued that cross-cultural generalizations, such as those made in the natural sciences, are impossible.
Thus, he fights discrimination against immigrants, blacks, and indigenous peoples of America. Many American anthropologists have adopted the agenda for social reform, and racial theories remain a popular subject for today's anthropologists. The so-called "Four Fields of Approach" has its origins in Boasian Anthropology, dividing discipline into four important, interrelated (eg archaeological) sociocultural, anthropological, linguistic and anthropological fields. Anthropology in the United States continues to be strongly influenced by the Boasian tradition, especially its emphasis on culture.
Kroeber, Mead, and Benedict
Boas uses his position at Columbia University and the American Museum of Natural History to train and develop several generations of students. His first generation of students included Alfred Kroeber, Robert Lowie, Edward Sapir and Ruth Benedict, each of whom produced a very detailed study of North American native cultures. They provide many of the details used to attack the theory of a single evolutionary process. Kroeber and Sapir's focus on Native American languages ​​helped build linguistics as a truly general science and liberated it from its historical focus on Indo-European languages.
The publication of the textbook Alfred Kroeber, Anthropology, marks a turning point in American anthropology. After three decades of gathering material, the Boasi people felt the urge to generalize. This is most evident in the 'Culture and Personality' study conducted by Boot youngsters such as Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict. Influenced by psychoanalytic psychologists including Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, these writers seek to understand how individual personalities are shaped by the broader cultural and social forces in which they grow.
Although works like Coming of Age in Samoa and
In the 1950s and mid-1960s, anthropology tended to increasingly model itself after the natural sciences. Some anthropologists, such as Lloyd Fallers and Clifford Geertz, focus on the process of modernization that newly independent nations can develop. Others, such as Julian Steward and Leslie White, focus on how society evolves and adapts their ecological niche - the approach popularized by Marvin Harris.
The economic anthropology influenced by Karl Polanyi and practiced by Marshall Sahlins and George Dalton challenged the standard neoclassical economy to take account of cultural and social factors, and used Marxian analysis into anthropological studies. In Britain, the paradigm of British Social Anthropology began to break apart when Max Gluckman and Peter Worsley experimented with Marxism and writers like Rodney Needham and Edmund Leach incorporated the structuralism of LÃÆ' Â © vi-Strauss into their work. Structuralism also affected a number of developments in the 1960s and 1970s, including cognitive anthropology and component analysis.
In keeping with the times, many anthropologists were politicized through the Algerian War of Independence and opposition to the Vietnam War; Marxism became the increasingly popular theoretical approach in the discipline. In the 1970s authors of books such as Reinventing Anthropology worried about the relevance of anthropology.
Since the 1980s the question of power, as examined in Eric Wolf's Europe and People Without History , has become a center of discipline. In the 1980s, books such as Anthropology and Colonial Encounter contemplated anthropological relationships with colonial inequality, while the great popularity of theorists such as Antonio Gramsci and Michel Foucault diverted the issue of power and hegemony into the spotlight. Gender and sexuality became a popular topic, as did the relationship between history and anthropology, influenced by Marshall Sahlins (again), which drew LÃÆ' Â © vi-Strauss and Fernand Braudel to examine the relationship between symbolic meanings, sociocultural structures, and individual agents in the process historical transformation. Jean and John Comaroff produced an entire generation of anthropologists at the University of Chicago who focused on these themes. Also influential on these issues are Nietzche, Heidegger, critical theory from the Frankfurt Schools, Derrida and Lacan. Geertz, Schneider and interpretive anthropology
Many anthropologists react to the new emphasis on materialism and scientific modeling derived from Marx by emphasizing the importance of cultural concepts. Authors like David Schneider, Clifford Geertz, and Marshall Sahlins developed a more refined cultural concept as a network of meanings or tags, which proved very popular inside and outside the discipline. Geertz must state:
"Believing, with Max Weber, that humans are animals suspended in the webs of their own meaning have spun, I regard culture as the webs, and its analysis does not become an experimental science in search of law but is interpretative, seeking meaning."
Geertz's interpretation method involves what he calls "bold description." The symbols of ritual culture, political and economic action, and kinship, are "read" by anthropologists as if they were documents in a foreign language. The interpretation of the symbols must be reframed for their anthropological audiences, that is to change from the concept of "near-experience" but foreign from other cultures, into the theoretical "far-reaching" concepts of anthropologists. These interpretations must then be reflected back to the originators, and their adequacy as the translation is refined repeatedly, a process called the hermeneutic circle. Geertz applies his methods in a number of areas, creating highly productive courses of study. His analysis of "religion as a cultural system" is very influential outside of anthropology. David Schnieder's cultural analysis of American kinship has proven equally influential. Schneider points out that the American peoples-cultural emphasis on "blood connections" has undue influence on the anthropological kinship theory, and that kinship is not a biological characteristic but a cultural relationship established in very different terms in different societies.
The leading British symbolic anthropologists include Victor Turner and Mary Douglas.
Post-modern replacement
In the late 1980s and 1990s writers such as James Clifford contemplated the authority of ethnography, in particular how and why anthropological knowledge was possible and authoritative. They reflect the trends in research and discourse initiated by feminists at the academy, although they ask themselves not to comment specifically on the pioneering critics. However, a key aspect of feminist theory and method becomes de rigueur as part of a 'post-modern moment' in anthropology: Ethnography becomes more interpretive and reflexive, explicitly addressing author, cultural, gender and racial methodologies positioning, and its influence on ethnographic analysis. This is part of the more popular tendency of contemporary popular postmodernism. Today anthropologists are concerned with a wide range of issues related to the contemporary world, including globalization, medicine and biotechnology, indigenous rights, virtual communities, and the anthropology of industrial societies.
Sub-field of socio-cultural anthropology
Method
Modern cultural anthropology has its origins, and evolved as a reaction to 19th century ethnology, which involved the organized comparison of human society. Bachelors such as E.B. Tylor and J.G. Frazers in Britain mostly work with materials collected by others - usually missionaries, merchants, explorers, or colonial officials - making them "arm-seat anthropologists".
Observation of participants
Participant observation is one of the main research methods of cultural anthropology. It depends on the assumption that the best way to understand a group of people is to interact with them closely for long periods of time. This method is derived from field research of social anthropologists, notably Bronislaw Malinowski in England, a student of Franz Boas in the United States, and in urban research at the Chicago School of Sociology. Historically, the group of people studied was a small, non-Western society. However, today may be specific companies, church groups, sports teams, or small towns. There is no limit on what subjects participants observe, as long as groups of people are studied intimately by observing anthropologists over long periods of time. This allows anthropologists to develop a trusting relationship with the subject of the study and receive a cultural perspective, which helps him provide a richer description of the future when writing about the culture. Observable details (such as daily allotment) and more hidden details (such as taboo behavior) are easier to observe and interpret over a longer period of time, and researchers can find the difference between what participants say - and often believe - should happen (formal system) and what actually happens, or between various aspects of the formal system; In contrast, a one-off survey of people's answers to a set of questions may be fairly consistent, but tends not to show conflict between various aspects of the social system or between representation and conscious behavior.
The interaction between the ethnographer and the cultural informant must go both ways. Just as an ethnographer may be naive or curious about a culture, members of that culture may be curious about the ethnographer. To build relationships that will ultimately lead to a better understanding of the cultural contexts of a situation, an anthropologist should be open to being part of a group, and willing to develop meaningful relationships with its members. One way to do this is to find a small area of ​​common experience between an anthropologist and his subject, and then expand from this similarity into a larger area of ​​difference. Once a connection has been established, it becomes easier to integrate into the community, and more likely that accurate and complete information is shared with the anthropologist.
Before participant observation can begin, an anthropologist must choose the location and focus of the study. This focus may change once anthropologists actively observe the group of people selected, but having an idea of ​​what they want to learn before starting fieldwork allows an anthropologist to spend time researching background information on their topic. It can also help to know what previous research has been done in a chosen location of a person or on the same topic, and if participants' observations take place at a location where spoken language is not one of the anthropologists familiar with, he will usually also learn the language. This allows anthropologists to become more established in society. The lack of translator needs makes communication more direct, and allows anthropologists to provide a richer and more contextual representation of what they are witnessing. In addition, participant observation often requires permission from government and research institutions in the field of study, and always requires some form of funding.
The majority of participants' observations are based on the conversation. This can be casual and friendly dialogue, or it can be a more structured interview. The combination of both is often used, sometimes along with photography, mapping, artefact collections, and various other methods. In some cases, the ethnographer also turns to structured observation, where anthropologist observations are directed by a series of specific questions that he or she is trying to answer. In the case of structured observation, an observer may be required to record the sequence of events, or to describe a particular part of the surrounding environment. While anthropologists are still trying to be integrated into the groups they study, and still participate in the events they observe, structured observations are more directed and specific than the observations of participants in general. This helps standardize the method of study when ethnographic data are being compared in some groups or needed to meet certain objectives, such as research for government policy decisions.
One of the common criticisms of participant observation is lack of objectivity. Since each anthropologist has his or her own background and set of experiences, each individual tends to interpret the same culture in different ways. The ethnographer has much to do with what he will eventually write about a culture, because every researcher is influenced by his own perspective. This is considered a problem especially when anthropologists write in current ethnography, the present tense that makes the culture appear trapped in time, and ignores the fact that it may interact with other cultures or evolve gradually since anthropologists make observations. To avoid this, ethnographers of the past have advocated strict training, or for anthropologists working in teams. However, these approaches have generally not been successful, and modern ethnographers often choose to incorporate their personal experiences and possible biases in their writing instead.
Participant observation also raises ethical questions, because an anthropologist controls what he reports about a culture. In terms of representation, an anthropologist has greater power than the subject of his studies, and this has invited criticism from participant observations in general. In addition, anthropologists have struggled with the effect of their presence on a culture. Simply present, a researcher causes a change in culture, and anthropologists continue to question whether or not it is appropriate to influence the culture they are learning, or perhaps to avoid influences.
Ethnography
In the 20th century, most cultural and social anthropologists turned to ethnographic crafts. Ethnography is the writing about people, in certain places and times. Typically, anthropologists live among people in other societies for a certain period of time, simultaneously participating in and observing the social and cultural life of the group.
Many other ethnographic techniques have produced ethnographic writing or preserved details, as cultural anthropologists also curate materials, spend hours in libraries, churches and schools researching records, investigating graves, and deciphering ancient manuscripts. Typical ethnography will also include information on physical geography, climate and habitat. It is intended to be a holistic writing about the people in question, and today often includes the longest time of past events that ethnographers can get through primary and secondary research.
Bronis? Aw Malinowski developed the ethnographic method, and Franz Boas taught it in the United States. Boas students such as Alfred L. Kroeber, Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead drew cultural conceptions and cultural relativism to develop cultural anthropology in the United States. Simultaneously, Malinowski and A.R. Radcliffe Brown's students are developing social anthropology in England. While cultural anthropology focuses on symbols and values, social anthropology focuses on social groups and institutions. Today social-cultural anthropologists attend all these elements.
At the beginning of the 20th century, socio-cultural anthropology developed in various forms in Europe and in the United States. The "social anthropologist" of Europe focuses on observed social behavior and on the "social structure", ie on relationships between social roles (eg, husband and wife, or parents and children) and social institutions (eg, religion, economics and politics ).
American "cultural anthropologists" focus on the way people express their views of themselves and their world, especially in symbolic forms, such as art and myth. Both approaches are often fused together and generally complement each other. For example, kinship and leadership functions both as a symbolic system and as a social institution. Today almost all socio-cultural anthropologists refer to the work of both predecessor groups, and have a common interest in what people do and what people say.
Cross-cultural comparison
One way anthropologists use to combat ethnocentrism is to engage in cross-cultural comparisons. It is important to examine the so-called "universal human" to the ethnographic record. Monogamy, for example, is often touted as universal human nature, but comparative studies show that it is not true. The Human Relations Area Files, Inc. (HRAF) is a research institute based at Yale University. Since 1949, its mission has been to encourage and facilitate worldwide comparative studies of past and present human, human, and behavioral cultures. The name came from the Institute of Human Relations, an interdisciplinary program/building at Yale at the time. The Institute of Human Relations has sponsored the HRAF precursor, Cross Cultural Survey (see George Peter Murdock), as part of an effort to develop an integrated science of human behavior and culture. Two eHRAF ​​databases on the Web are expanded and updated annually. eHRAF ​​â € <â €
Cross-cultural comparisons include Western (or de-industrial) industries. Cultures in the more traditional cross-cultural samples of small-scale communities are:
Multilayered ethnography
Ethnography dominates socio-cultural anthropology. However, many contemporary socio-cultural anthropologists have rejected earlier ethnographic models for treating local cultures as limited and isolated. These anthropologists continue to occupy themselves with the different ways that people experience in various local locations and understand their lives, but they often argue that one can not understand these particular ways of life solely from a local perspective; they instead merge the focus on local efforts to understand a larger political, economic and cultural framework that impacts the realities of local life. The main supporters of this approach include Arjun Appadurai, James Clifford, George Marcus, Sidney Mintz, Michael Taussig, Eric Wolf, and Ronald Daus.
A growing trend in anthropological research and analysis is the use of multi-sited ethnography, discussed in George Marcus's article, "Ethnography In/From the World System: The Emergence of Multi-Sited Ethnography". Given the culture embedded in macro construction of the global social order, multi-use ethnography uses traditional methodologies in various locations both spatially and temporally. Through this methodology, greater insight can be obtained when examining the impact of the world system on local and global communities.
Also emerging in multi-sided ethnography is a larger interdisciplinary approach to fieldwork, bringing methods from cultural studies, media studies, science and technology, and others. In multilayered ethnography, research tracks subjects across space and time boundaries. For example, multilayered ethnography can follow "something", like certain commodities, when transported through a network of global capitalism.
Multi-layered ethnography can also follow ethnic groups in diasporas, stories or rumors that appear in multiple locations and over time, metaphors that appear in various ethnographic locations, or biographies of individuals or groups as they move through space and time. It may also follow an outrageous conflict. An example of multi-sited ethnography is the work of Nancy Scheper-Hughes on the international black market for the trading of human organs. In this study, he followed the organs as they were transferred through various networks of legal and illegal capitalism, as well as urban rumors and legends circulating in the poor about kidnapping children and organ theft.
Socio-cultural anthropologists are increasingly turning their investigative eyes into a "Western" culture. For example, Philippe Bourgois won the Margaret Mead Award in 1997 for In Search of Respect , a study of entrepreneurs in Harlem crack-den. Also increasingly popular are the ethnographies of professional communities, such as laboratory researchers, Wall Street investors, law firms, or employees of computer information technology (IT).
Topics in cultural anthropology
Kinship and family
Kinship refers to anthropological studies of the ways in which humans form and maintain relationships with one another, and furthermore, how those relationships operate within and define social organization.
Research in kinship studies often traverses to different anthropological anthropologies including medical anthropology, feminist, and public. This may be due to its basic concept, as articulated by linguistic anthropologist Patrick McConvell:
Kinship is the foundation of all human societies we know. Everyone knows father and mother, son and daughter, brother and sister, uncle and aunt, husband and wife, grandparents, cousins, and often more complicated types of relationships in the terminology they use. It is a matrix in which human children are born in most cases, and their first words are often kin terms.
Throughout history, kinship studies have focused primarily on the topic of marriage, heredity, and procreation. Anthropologists have written extensively on variations in cross-cultural marriage and its validity as a human institution. There are striking differences between people in terms of practice and marital value, leaving plenty of room for anthropological field work. For example, Nuer of Sudan and Brahmans of Nepal practice polygamy, in which one person has several marriages with two or more women. Nyar of India and Nyimba of Tibet and Nepal practice polyandry, in which a woman often marries two or more men. The practice of marriage found in most cultures, however, is monogamy, in which a woman marries a man. The anthropologists also study different marriage taboos in different cultures, the most commonly resilient marriage inest in relation of siblings and parent-child. It has been found that all cultures have a steadfast incest to some degree, but taboos shift between cultures when marriage extends beyond the core family unit.
There is the same fundamental difference in which procreative action is concerned. Although anthropologists have found that biology is recognized in every cultural relationship with procreation, there are differences in the ways in which cultures assess parental constructs. For example, in the municipality of Nuyoo Oaxaca, Mexico, it is believed that a child can have a partible pregnant mother and a partible mother. In this case, a child will have many biological mothers in case that he was born of a woman and then breastfed by another. A child will have several biological fathers in the case that his mother has sex with many men, following a common belief in Nuyoo culture that pregnancy should be preceded by sex with many men in order to have the necessary sperm accumulation.
The 20th century shift is late in interest
In the twenty-first century, the ideas of western kinship have evolved beyond the traditional family assumptions of the nuclear family, raising anthropological questions about conciliation, lineage, and normative marriage expectations. This shift can be traced back to the 1960s, with a reassessment of the basic principles of kinship offered by Edmund Leach, Rodney Neeham, David Schneider, and others. Rather than relying on narrow ideas about Western normality, kinship studies are increasingly meeting "more ethnographic voices, human agency, intersecting power structures, and historical context". The study of kinship has evolved to accommodate the fact that kinship can not be separated from its institutional roots and must respect the communities in which it lives, including the contradictions, hierarchies, and individual experiences of the people within them. This shift was further developed by the emergence of a second wave of feminism in the early 1970s, which introduced ideas of martial oppression, sexual autonomy, and domestic subordination. Other themes that emerged during this time included a frequent comparison between the Eastern and Western kinship systems and the more attention given to the anthropologist community itself, a rapid change from the focus that has traditionally been paid to most "foreign", non- West. community.
The kinship study began gaining mainstream recognition in the late 1990s with the rapid popularity of feminist anthropology, especially with its work related to biological anthropology and cross-cutting criticism of gender relations. At this time, there is the coming of "Third World feminism", a movement that states a kinship study can not examine the gender relations of developing countries separately, and must respect racial and economic nuances as well. This criticism becomes relevant, for example, in Jamaican anthropological studies: race and class are seen as a major obstacle to Jamaican liberation from economic imperialism, and gender as identity largely ignored. Third World Feminism aims to combat this at the beginning of the twenty-first century by promoting these categories as common factors. In Jamaica, marriage as an institution is often replaced by a series of partners, as poor women can not rely on regular financial contributions in a climate of economic instability. In addition, there is a common practice of Jamaican women who artificially brighten their skin tone to ensure economic viability. These anthropological findings, according to Third World feminism, can not see gender, race, or class differences as separate entities, and should instead recognize that they interact together to produce a unique individual experience.
The rise of reproductive anthropology
The study of kinship also experienced an increased interest in reproductive anthropology with advances in assisted reproductive technology (ART), including in vitro fertilization (IVF). This progress has led to a new dimension of anthropological research, as they challenge Western standards of biogenetic-based kinship, association, and parenting. According to anthropologists Maria C. Inhorn and Daphna Birenbaum-Carmeli, "ART has expressed the idea of ​​linkage and leads to a more dynamic idea of ​​kinning, kinship as a process, as something that is being constructed rather than naturally given." With this technology, the question of kinship arises over the difference between biological and genetic relations, as a gestational substitute can provide a biological environment for the embryo while a genetic bond remains with a third party. If the genetic material, the surrogate, and the adoptive mother are involved, anthropologists have admitted that there is a possibility for three "biological" mothers for one child. With ART, there is also an anthropological question about the intersection of wealth and fertility: ART is generally only available to those in the highest income group, which means poor infertile people are inherently devalued in the system. There are also reproductive tourism issues and body commodification, when individuals seek economic security through hormonal stimulation and egg-taking, which is a potentially harmful procedure. With IVF, in particular, there are many questions of embryonic value and life status, especially with regard to the manufacture of stem cells, testing, and research.
Recent issues in kinship studies, such as adoption, have revealed and challenged Western cultural character of genetic bonding, "blood". The western bias toward single parent homes has also been explored through similar anthropological research, revealing that single-parent households experience "greater levels of scrutiny and are routinely seen as 'other' of nuclear patriarchal families". The dynamics of power in reproduction, when explored through "conventional" and "unconventional" family comparative analyzes, have been used to dissect Western assumptions of childbearing and child-rearing in contemporary kinship studies.
Criticism on kinship studies
Kinship relations, as an area of ​​anthropological inquiry, have been widely criticized throughout the discipline. One criticism is that, for starters, the familial study framework is too structured and formulated, relying on crowded language and strict rules. Another criticism, explored at length by American anthropologist David Schneider, argues that kinship is limited by the Western ethnocentrism in it. Schneider proposes that kinship is not a cross-culturally applicable field, since theory itself depends on European assumptions about normality. He states in the widely circulated book of 1984 a critique of the kinship study that "inship has been defined by European social scientists, and European social scientists use their own folk culture as the source of many, if not all the ways they formulate and understand the world about them ". However, this critique has been challenged by the argument that it is linguistic, not a cultural difference, which has made it possible for European bias, and that bias can be lifted by centralizing methodologies on fundamental human concepts. Polish anthropologist Anna Wierzbicka argues that "mother" and "father" are examples of such basic human concepts, and can only be westernized when combined with English concepts such as "parents" and "brothers".
More recent criticism of the study of kinship is its solipsistic focus on the privileges, human relations of the West and the promotion of the normative ideal of human exceptions. In the "Critical Kinship Study", social psychologists Elizabeth Peel and Damien Riggs argue to move beyond this human-centered framework, choosing to explore kinship from a posthumanist point of view in which anthropologists focus on animal-to-animal relations, , and human practice.
Institutional anthropology
The role of anthropology in institutions has grown significantly since the end of the 20th century. Much of this development can be attributed to the rise of anthropologists working outside the academy and the increasing importance of globalization in both institutions and the field of anthropology. Anthropologists may be employed by such institutions as nonprofit businesses, nonprofit organizations, and governments. For example, cultural anthropologists are generally employed by the United States federal government.
The two types of institutions defined in the field of anthropology are institutions and social institutions. The total institution is a place that comprehensively coordinates the actions of the people in it, and examples of total institutions including prisons, monasteries, and hospitals. Social institutions, on the other hand, are constructs that regulate the daily life of individuals, such as kinship, religion, and economics. Anthropological institutions can analyze trade unions, businesses ranging from small businesses to corporations, governments, medical organizations, education, prisons, and financial institutions. Non-governmental organizations have garnered special interest in the field of institutional anthropology because they were able to fulfill roles previously neglected by governments, or previously perceived by families or local groups, in an effort to reduce social problems.
The type and method of scholarship conducted in the anthropology of the institution can take a number of forms. Institutional anthropologists can study relationships between organizations or between organizations and other parts of society. Institutional anthropology can also focus on the internal work of institutions, such as relationships, hierarchies and cultures formed, and ways in which these elements are transmitted and maintained, altered, or abandoned over time. In addition, some anthropological institutions examine the agency's specific design and its appropriate strengths. More specifically, anthropologists can analyze certain events within an institution, conduct semiotic investigations, or analyze mechanisms in which knowledge and culture are organized and dispersed.
In all the manifestations of institutional anthropology, participant observation is essential for understanding the intricacies of the institution's workings and the consequences of actions taken by the individuals within them. At the same time, the anthropology of the institution extends beyond the examination of the general involvement of individuals in institutions to discover how and why organizational principles evolve in the way they do.
General considerations taken by anthropologists in studying institutions include the physical location in which a researcher puts himself or herself in place, since important interactions often occur personally, and the fact that agency members are often examined in their workplace and may be unemployed. time to discuss the details of their day-to-day efforts. The individual's ability to present the workings of an institution in a particular light or frame should also be taken into account when using interviews and document analysis to understand an institution, since an anthropologist's involvement may encounter distrust when information is released into society not directly controlled by the institution and potentially damaging.
See also
References
External links
- Cultural Anthropology at Wikibooks
- Media related to Cultural anthropology in Wikimedia Commons
- Human Relations Area File
- Basic Guidelines for Cross-Cultural Research
- The web page "The History of German Anthropology/Ethnology 1945/49-1990
- Student Anthropology Student Network Site - This site offers tutorials, information on the subject, discussion forums and a large collection of links for all interested cultural anthropologists
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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