The Social Science Encyclopedia Adam Kuper&Jessica Kuper

AnthropologyEthnographic fieldworkCultureCultural AnthropologySocial Anthropology

ZELİHA UYURCA

ID 501 - Advanced Project Development in Industrial Design

Anthropology

• The idea of culture on four interrelated fronts:

• Considerations of the politics of representing other culture and societies,

• Considerations of power relations in which cultural meanings are

situated,

• Reconsideration of the relation of language to culture

• Considerations of person, self and emotion in relation to cultural

meanings.

Ethnographic fieldwork

• The idea of culture on four interrelated fronts:

• Considerations of the politics of representing other culture and societies,

• Considerations of power relations in which cultural meanings are

situated,

• Reconsideration of the relation of language to culture

• Considerations of person, self and emotion in relation to cultural

meanings.

Culture

• Culture

• Human society is consist of individuals who endeavor activities. These

activities are learned by imitation and tuition from other people and they

are part of social heritage or culture and society.

• Besides learned activities as one part of society culture, social heritage

include also artefacts (tools, shelter), and ideational complex of construct

proposition expressed in system of symbol and natural language.

Culture

• Culture

• The ideational system and symbolic system of social heritage are

necessary due to complex and numerous human adaptive activities. They

could only be learned and performed with a large storage of a

knowledge.

• Social heritage and culture is normative. Individuals in a community think

that their social heritage is proper and true. (their ways of doing things,

understanding of world, their symbolic expression.)

Culture

• Culture Definitions from Different Perspective:

• Culture is a complex whole which consists of knowledge, belief, art, law,

morals, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by a

member of society.

• From only certain aspect of social heritage, culture is restricted to non-

physical or mental part of social heritage.

• Culture is not only a descriptive term for a collection ideas, actions,

objects, but also refers to mental entities which are the necessary cause

of certain actions and objects.• Culture is a coherent and integrated whole, that is, any particular culture

can be treated as one thing which has one nature.

Culture

• Culture Definitions from Different Perspective:

• Issues involving the integration of culture are related to issues concerning

whether or not culture is bounded entity.

• Cultural process is a combination of mental and physical, cognitive and

affective, representational and normative phenomena. The definition of

culture should not be restricted to just one part of social heritage.

Cultural Anthropology

• Cultural Anthropology focuses on the study of social practices, expressive forms and language use through constituted, invoked and contested meanings in human behavior.

•In the early 20th century, Franz Boas focused on characteristic of different ways of life than broad comparison and generalization, and demonstrating race and culture that are not close. His culture concept is defined as relativistic, pluralistic, holistic, integrated and historically conditioned framework for human behavior determination.

•Since late1970s, cultural anthropologists have been challenging on Boasian assumptions about culture as shared, integrated and taken-for-granted unified whole.

Cultural Anthropology

• The idea of culture on four interrelated fronts:

• Considerations of the politics of representing other culture and societies,

• Considerations of power relations in which cultural meanings are

situated,

• Reconsideration of the relation of language to culture

• Considerations of person, self and emotion in relation to cultural

meanings.

Cultural Anthropology

•The politics of representation

• Edward Said’ critic view about western description of other cultures

stresses that this is a dehumanizing mode of writing that serves political

interest of colonizing and cause west seeing itself advancing than static

and scientific and rational than traditional.

• Cultural anthropologists have changed their modes of writings and

analysis to reflect on the political nature on all anthropological writing.

Cultural Anthropology

•Culture and Power

• Cultural anthropology emphasizes instead tactical use of cultural

discourses in everyday social practice, the way that cultural prepositions

are upheld and serve the interest of certain segments of a society.

• Cultural anthropologists have analyzed the diffusing of cultural relations

as responses to power relations on global scale and to specific colonial

and post colonial political and economic situations.

Cultural Anthropology

•Language in Cultural Anthropology

• Speakers rhetorically construct or reconstruct status, identity and social

relationship in varied situation of everyday life.

• Cultural anthropologists use “discourse” term to define language as set of

resources that speakers draw on to construct and negotiate their social

worlds in specific context.

Cultural Anthropology

•Person, Self and Emotion

• In ethnographic writing, culture is monolithic and homogenous. In modes

of writing, human subjectivity is both social and individual and culture is

both shared and contested.

• In earlier work, personality and culture were seen as unified wholes.

Social Anthropology

• Social Anthropology from Historical Perspective:

• Social Anthropology term was firstly appeared in early 20th century as a branch of anthropology.

• At first, it was a evolutionist project. Aim of the project was to rebuild the original primitive society and to draw a chart of its development through various stages to civilization.

• In the 1920s, British Social Anthropology turned to comparative study of contemporary societies under impression of Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown.

• Social Anthropology became a unification of Durheimian sociology and ethnographic field research by participant observation. This combination was known as “Functionalism”.

Social Anthropology

• Social Anthropology from Historical Perspective:

• Participant observation research gained importance in terms of characteristic of ethnographic research. This research strategy became an important characteristic of functional anthropology.

• In post-war France, Claude Levi-Strauss evolved the “Structuralist” approach.

• In the 1970s, Marxist critics charged both “Functionalist” and “Structuralist” schools with being ahistorical and neglecting macro sociological process.

• In the 1980s, sociological orientation characterizing social anthropology turned to concern with problems of meaning and with culture. Later, post-modernist approach made some converts but this revolutions cause loss of confidence in objectivity and reliability of ethnographic field methods.

Social Anthropology

• Modern Social Anthropologist:

• Modern social anthropologists took advantage from contemporary social theories and they experienced wide range of comparative, historical and ethnographic research strategies. They made contribution to applied research studies on such questions as ethnic relations, immigration, the effects of medical and educational provision, and marketing.

• Fundamental object of modern social anthropology is to face models in current social sciences with experience and models of people all over the world.