UNIT 1 SOCIALAND CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY: MEANING, SCOPE AND RELEVANCE

 Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology

Understanding Society and Culture

• Definitions and Relationships:
  • Society: The organized group of individuals and their interactions.
  • Culture: The shared practices, beliefs, values, and norms of a group.
  • Interrelated but Distinct: Society provides the structure for human interaction, while culture gives it meaning.

Common Misconceptions

• Natural Environment vs. Human Creations:
  • Society and culture are not natural phenomena or divinely created; they are human constructs.
  • Historically, many believed society and culture were ordained by God.

Example: Food and Cultural Taboos

• Food Practices:
  • People eat what they consider food, influenced by cultural beliefs, not just biological edibility.
  • Certain foods are forbidden due to cultural or religious beliefs, perceived as divine commands.

Cultural Taboos and Rationality

• Cultural Origins:
  • Taboos are not divine but cultural, often shaped by history and context.
  • These cultural prohibitions may have hidden rationality linked to historical circumstances (Harris 1985).

Evolution of Society and Culture

• Dynamic Nature:
  • Both society and culture evolve over time, influenced by social, economic, and political contexts.
  • What is considered right or wrong can change over time.

Key Takeaways

• Human Creations:
  • Society and culture are products of human reasoning and historical evolution.
• Non-Static:
• These concepts are fluid and continuously transforming.

1. Society:

   • A network of social relationships.
   • Provides structure for human interactions.
   • Consists of kinship networks, clans, castes, tribes, ethnic groups, nations, etc.

2. Culture:

   • Shared practices, beliefs, values, and norms of a group.
   • Gives meaning to human interactions.
   • Acquired, not inherent or genetic.

Social Identity

• Definition: Sense of belonging to a group.
• Layers of Identity:
  • National (e.g., Indian)
  • Religious (e.g., Hindu, Christian)
  • Ethnic or caste (e.g., tribe, caste group)
• Types of Identity:
  • Ascribed: Identities we are born with (e.g., nationality, religion).
  • Acquired: Identities we adopt later in life (e.g., profession, hobbies).

Culture and World-View

• Cultural Traits:
  • Language: Arbitrary assignment of sounds to meanings.
  • Food: What is considered edible or non-edible.
  • Religion: Worship of specific deities and following certain beliefs.
• World-View: Cognition about the world and prescribed ways to deal with life.

Human Capacity for Culture

• Symbolic Behavior:
  • Capacity for abstract thinking and imagination.
  • Assigning meanings to objects and actions.
• Variety in Human Practices:
  • Different languages, foods, and lifestyles.
  • Not driven by genetics but by culture (Kaplan and Manners 1972).

Acquiring Culture

• Socialization:
  • Process of learning social norms and rules.
  • Transmission of behaviors and roles (e.g., parent-child relationship).
• Enculturation:
• Process of learning the ways of life and collective meanings.
• Learning how to behave, what to eat, what to wear, etc.

Social Anthropology

• Focus:
  • Study of social relationships and social institutions (e.g., family, kinship, political, economic).
  • Examination of norms, rules of behavior, and societal structures.
• Key Concepts:
  • Social Institutions:
    • Example: Political institutions
      • Study of institutional structure (e.g., Panchayat)
      • Focus on personnel, rights and duties, hierarchy, norms, and principles of interaction.
• Historical Development:
  • Developed primarily in Britain and Europe.
  • Influential Figures:
    • A.R. Radcliffe-Brown
    • E.E. Evans-Pritchard
    • Bronislaw Malinowski
    • Raymond Firth
  • Indian Influence:
    • M.N. Srinivas
  • Focus: Structures of hierarchy, cooperation, formal rules of behavior, norms of interaction.

Cultural Anthropology

• Focus:
  • Study of symbols, meaning systems, values, and beliefs.
  • Examination of underlying principles guiding actions.
• Key Concepts:
  • Cultural Analysis:
    • Focus on power negotiations, strategies, tactics of power use and manipulation.
    • Study of symbols manifesting power and subtle use of meanings.
  • Example: Political arena
    • Focus on the processes of obtaining positions, not just the positions themselves.
• Historical Development:
  • Developed primarily in the USA.
  • Influential Figures:
    • Franz Boas (founding father)
    • Alfred Kroeber
    • Margaret Mead
    • Ruth Benedict
    • Ruth Bunzel
    • Darryl Forde
    • Melville Herskovits
    • Ralph Linton
  • Focus: Super-organic (cultural) aspects, historical and environmental context.
  • Examination: Development, diffusion, adaptation of cultural traits and their place in larger systems of meanings.

Comparison of Social and Cultural Anthropology

• Social Anthropology:
  • Emphasis on structures and formal rules of interaction.
  • Cultural aspects like meanings and values are secondary to the focus on structures.
• Cultural Anthropology:
• Emphasis on meanings, symbols, and the cultural context.
• Structures serve as a background for contextualizing meanings and symbols.

Scope of Social and Cultural Anthropology

Key Areas and Scope

• Broad Scope:

  • Deals directly with human situations, treating humans as a totality (body, mind, species).
  • Includes history, geography, oral history, and ethno-history.

• Focus on Human Beliefs:

  • Emphasis on people's version of history, not just documented history.
  • Actions motivated by beliefs and ethno-history.
  • Anthropology predicts behavior based on collective human action.

• Collective Focus:

  • Interest in the collective and public domain, not individual characters.
  • Relationship between individuals and society:
    • How society shapes individuals.
    • How individuals reproduce society through actions.

• Example: Marriage in Society:

  • Cultural conditioning affects partner choice (e.g., racial and class divides in American marriages).
  • Social changes reflect cultural changes (e.g., election of a black president, changes in inter-racial marriage patterns).

Research Focus and Contributions

• Social Anthropology:

  • Studies social stratification, social institutions (economy, politics, religion, law).
  • Major aspects: kinship, family, marriage.
  • Classical works:
    • "African Systems of Kinship and Marriage"
    • "African Political Systems"
    • "Witchcraft among the Azande"
    • "The Nuers"
    • "Nuer Religion"
  • Incorporation of Marxism for historical analysis.

• Cultural Anthropology:

  • Investigates cultural meanings, symbols, values, and ideologies.
  • Studies changing cultural patterns and the deeper causes of changes.

Example Study: Inter-Racial Marriage in the USA

• Changing Patterns:

  • Increase in inter-racial marriages from 3% in 1967 to 17% among newlyweds in 2015.
  • 10% of all married people in 2015 had inter-racial marriages.

• Anthropological Investigation:

  • Studies initial existence of prejudices.
  • Analyzes causes of social and cultural changes.

• Cultural Focus:

  • Changing meanings of marriage.
  • Changing color symbols.
  • Shifts in values and ideologies.

• Social Focus:

  • Structural changes in economic and power equations.
  • Transforming social hierarchies.

Combined Approach: Social/Cultural Anthropology

• Modern preference for a combined approach rather than emphasizing one over the other.
• Holistic study of society and culture, encompassing both structural and symbolic aspects.

Expanded Scope of Social and Cultural Anthropology

Branches of Anthropology

• Ecological Anthropology: Studies the relationships between humans and their environments.
• Psychological Anthropology: Examines the relationship between the individual mind and culture.
• Medical Anthropology: Focuses on health, illness, and healthcare practices across cultures.
• Linguistic Anthropology: Investigates language and its social and cultural contexts.
• Historical Anthropology: Combines historical and anthropological methods to study past societies.
• Enterprise Anthropology: Analyzes business practices and organizational cultures.
• Anthropology of Women: Explores gender roles, identities, and inequalities.
• Anthropology of Tourism: Studies the impacts and dynamics of tourism.
• Anthropology of Disaster and Risk Management: Examines human responses to disasters and strategies for risk management.

Methodology

• Qualitative, In-Depth Analysis: Anthropologists emphasize deep, qualitative methods and data collection.
• Comparison with Other Disciplines:
  • Compete with psychology and history.
  • Justify their approach through unique anthropological methods.

Psychological Anthropology

• Distinction from Psychology:
  • Psychologists: Human mind and brain are universally similar.
  • Psychological Anthropologists: Investigate the relationship between individual mind and culture.
• Culture and Personality School:
  • Early childhood experiences shape adult personality (Freud’s theory).
  • Different cultures practice different child-rearing methods, leading to collective personality traits.
  • Examples:
    • South Asia: Children sleep with mothers, are carried in laps.
    • USA: Infants sleep separately, are carried in strollers.
• Cross-Cultural Personality Traits: Contemporary psychologists incorporate these traits (Schwartz, White, and Lutz 1992).

Reflection on Freud's Theory

• Psychoanalytic Theory:
  • Freud (1856-1939) proposed stages of childhood development affecting personality.
  • Biological urges drive stages: oral, anal, oedipal.
  • Resolved through cultural practices like weaning and toilet training.

Levels of Data in Social Anthropology

• Three Levels (John Beattie):
  • What Actually Happens: Established by statistical analysis (e.g., inter-racial marriage data).
  • What People Think Happens: Examines social norms and values.
  • What People Think Ought to Happen: Explores legal and moral values.
• Multi-Faceted Analysis:
• Detailed study of social interactions, norms, values, history, and context.
• Cultural anthropologists examine symbolic significance and moral aspects.

Relevance of Social and Cultural Anthropology

In-depth Study and Ethnographic Method

• Anthropological Methods:
  • Long-term and engaged study (fieldwork) to uncover deeper social conditions.
  • Qualitative in nature; involves real human interactions rather than just secondary data.
• Ethnographic Method:
  • Holistic study of specific areas using personal narratives, life histories, and face-to-face interviews.
  • Anthropologists live with the people being studied, a process called "going native".
  • Interaction with the field brings subjective insights, making the anthropologist part of the study.

Empathy and Advocacy

• Close Interactions:
  • Yield data inaccessible through superficial or short-term methods.
  • Anthropologists often become advocates for the people they study, building empathetic relationships.
  • Scholars may identify with their informants, sometimes becoming activists for their causes.

Overcoming Ethnocentrism

• Ethnocentrism:
  • Tendency to view one's own culture as superior.
  • Anthropologists are trained to move beyond this mindset and appreciate cultural diversity.
• Case Study: Felix Padel’s work on human sacrifice among the Kondh tribes of Orissa:
  • Demonstrates how British administrators exaggerated practices to depict tribes as primitive.
  • Highlights the British persecution's greater savagery compared to the actual practices.

Universal Humanism

• Non-judgmental Approach:
  • Anthropologists investigate real data and avoid stereotypes.
  • Committed to understanding practices in their cultural contexts without judgment.
• Appreciation of Diversity:
  • Respect for diverse ways of life is a hallmark of anthropology.
  • Efforts to extend this appreciation and promote cultural tolerance.

Key Points

Ethnographic Method

• Holistic Study: Uses personal narratives, life histories, and interviews.
• Going Native: Anthropologists live with the studied communities.
• Subjective Interaction: Involves emotions and sentiments of both anthropologists and informants.

Empathy and Advocacy

• Real Human Interactions: Anthropologists relate statistics to real lives.
• Advocacy Role: Often represent and fight for the communities they study.
• Lifelong Relationships: Scholars may form enduring bonds with their informants.

Overcoming Ethnocentrism

• Understanding Diversity: Trained to accept and justify diverse cultural practices.
• Case Study: British depiction of the Kondh tribes versus the reality of human sacrifice practices.

Universal Humanism

• Non-judgmental: Focus on understanding cultural practices without bias.
• Cultural Diversity: Promotes respect for different ways of life.