Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
1. What is Anthropology?
a. Anthropology is study of all facets of humanity
b. An increasingly interdisciplinary field of inquiry
c. Borrows concepts & research from different fields to understand humans
d. Five Fields of Anthropology
i. Physical
1. Studies human evolution and biology, primate physiology
and behavior, human genetic variation, the interdependency
between humans and the natural environment, etc.
2. Prosimians Lemurs, Racoons
3. Monkeys (Old & New World)
4. Lesser & Greater Apes
5. Hominins
ii. Archaeology
1. Studies material culture
2. Things people make and use
3. Can tell us about communitys way of life and culture
iii. Anthropological Linguistics
1. Studies how humans use symbolic language to
communicate and represent the world
iv. Cultural
1. Studies the diverse ways of life, symbols, beliefs and
practices of humans from holistic, comparative perspective
v. Applied
1. Focuses on the application of anthropological studies to
determine answers to economical, political questions
a. Ex: Studying Hmong refugees in Laos to
understand illness and develop culturally sensitive
health programs for them
2. Anthropological Perspectives
a. Holistic
i. In order to understand a part, we must try to understand the whole
b. Comparative
i. We shouldnt make generalizations about humans and human
nature based on singular examples or norms of one culture
c. Relativistic
i. We should avoid judging the cultures of others based on our own
cultural standards and norms when we study them
d. Situated and Partial
i. Our perspective of the world and others is shaped by our sociocultural backgrounds and life experiences.
ii. Our perspective is always partial rather than omniscient (allseeing)
a. Acts of Representation
i. Telling stories or describing our lives are powerful because they
can shape how people interpret the world and perceive each other
ii. Acts of representation not only attempt to reflect perceptions of
social reality, but also help to create our sense of social reality
b. Who gets to represent whom?
i. Who has the means to represent themselves and who does not?
1. Ability to communicate your perspective and needs is a
powerful form of social self representation
ii. A college education is not just about learning facts or gaining
career skills
1. It is also about learning to more effectively communicate
your perspective and represent the complexity of your life
to others
c. Ethnography
i. These accounts are powerful because they often examine cultural
communities that are socially invisible and they shape how these
communities are understood by readers of ethnography
d. Social Marginalization
i. Marginals are people the system of labor cannot or will not use
ii. Leads to dehumanization
1. A whole category of people is expelled from useful
participation in social life and thus potentially subjected to
sever deprivation and even extermination
iii. Homeless live in a state of marginality that renders them largely
socially invisible except as threats to public safety and health
e. Power Inversion
i. Racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. often create power inversions
wherein those aligned with the dominant power structure see
themselves as victims of those they unknowingly marginalize
11. Social Inequality
a. 3 metrics according to Morton Fried
i. Prestige
1. Status, influence, respect, esteem
ii. Power
1. Ability to get others to do your work based on authority
iii. Wealth
1. Ownership/control of culturally valued material goods and
resources like land, tools, commodities, money, etc.
2. Wealth inequality shapes lives of people and physical
environment of cities
12. Globalization
a. Arjun Appadurai
i. Argued that globalization should be conceptualized as a dynamic
process made up of interacting global flows of:
1. People
2. Ideas
3. Media
4. Technologies
5. Capital and Commodities
ii. These global flows can produce disjunctive, uneven effects:
1. Great wealth for some, poverty for others
2. Greater cultural homogeneity and heterogeneity
3. A growing sense of global interconnection for some, and a
growing sense of isolation/disconnection for others
iii. He compared globalization to a plant with a rhizomic root structure
b. Globalization is a decentered process
i. Has sometimes been equated with Americanization/Westernization
ii. However, most scholars see it as a phenomenon that doesnt have a
definite or single center
c. David Harvey
i. Time-Space Compression
1. A term used to describe how capitalism and technology
have changed the apparent scale of world and the speed at
which human interactions occur
2. We have less time to make decisions, were more fickle
about social trends, cultures change very rapidly
d. Human Migration
i. Legal and cultural citizenship of immigrant communities continue
to be questioned
1. Cultural citizenship: the right to be considered a full
member of a society. Refers to cultural, social, civic
inclusion of a community of people and their culture