Four fields: CALC — Cultural, Archaeology, Linguistic, and biological (physical). American anthropology covers all four. C=Cultural, A=Archaeology, L=Linguistic, C=biological (physical).
Cultural · Archaeology · Linguistic · Biological
The four subdisciplines that make up American-style holistic anthropology
Cultural (social) anthropology: living cultures, ethnography, kinship, religion, economics. Archaeology: material remains of past cultures. Linguistic anthropology: language, communication, and culture. Biological (physical) anthropology: human evolution, primatology, skeletal biology. British anthropology splits into social anthropology + archaeology as separate disciplines. Boas established the four-field approach in the US.
Cultural
Ethnography, kinship, religion, economics
Archaeology
Material culture, past societies
Linguistic
Language, communication, meaning
Biological
Evolution, primatology, osteology
Cultural Relativism
Cultural relativism: understand practices within their own context before judging. Boas's core principle.
Cultural Relativism
The methodological heart of cultural anthropology
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.
Ethnographic Method
Ethnography: participant observation — live with the group, learn by doing. Malinowski pioneered it in Trobriand Islands.
Participant Observation
The primary research method of cultural anthropology
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.
How societies organize family relationships — the foundation of social structure
Patrilineal: kin traced through father's line (most common worldwide). Matrilineal: through mother's line (Navajo, Hopi, many W. African societies). Bilateral: through both (most Western societies). Clan: unilineal descent group. Lineage: traceable to known ancestor. Exogamy: marry outside the group (incest taboo). Endogamy: marry within (caste system, royalty). Cross-cousin marriage: common in many societies.
Patrilineal
Through father — property, name pass patrilineally
Three universal stages of every major life transition across all cultures
Separation: individual leaves old status/identity. Liminality (Turner): threshold state — "betwixt and between," ambiguous, neither old nor new. Often dangerous or sacred. Communitas: bonds formed between liminal peers. Incorporation: rejoins society with new recognized identity. Examples: graduation, bar/bat mitzvah, boot camp, wedding, initiation rituals. All share these three stages universally.
Separation
Leaves old status — symbolically "dies"
Liminality
In-between — no status, often sacred/dangerous
Incorporation
Rejoins with new recognized identity
Totems and Taboos
Totem: symbol reinforcing group identity. Taboo: prohibited behavior. Incest taboo is universal across all cultures.
Totems and Taboos
Two universal cultural mechanisms for encoding group identity and rules
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.
Three fundamental ways societies distribute goods and build social bonds
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
Structural functionalism: every cultural practice serves a social function that maintains the whole system.
Structural Functionalism
The theoretical approach that dominated anthropology from the 1920s–1960s
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 and Ritual
Religion: sacred vs profane (Durkheim). Ritual creates community. Shamanism: specialist mediates between worlds.
Anthropology of Religion
How anthropologists study belief, ritual, and the sacred across cultures
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.
Gender and Culture
Sex = biological. Gender = cultural construction. Margaret Mead: gender roles vary dramatically across cultures.
Sex vs Gender
Anthropology established that gender roles are culturally constructed, not biologically fixed
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 and Culture Change
Globalization: cultural homogenization vs hybridity. "McDonaldization" vs local adaptation and creolization.
Globalization and Cultural Change
How global flows of people, goods, and ideas reshape local cultures
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
Applied anthropology: use anthropological knowledge to solve real-world problems — health, development, policy, business.
Applied and Public Anthropology
Putting anthropological methods to work outside the university
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.
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🎓 Common Exam Questions
Q: What is cultural relativism and why is it a core principle of anthropology?
A: Cultural relativism (Boas) holds that cultural practices must be understood within their own context before being evaluated. It is methodologically essential because ethnocentrism — judging other cultures by one's own standards — leads to misinterpretation. Note: descriptive relativism (understanding) is widely accepted; moral relativism (no cross-cultural ethical judgments) is more contested. Anthropologists can critique practices (e.g. human rights violations) while still applying relativism as a methodological starting point.
Q: Describe rites of passage using Van Gennep's three stages with an example.
A: Van Gennep (1909) identified three stages: (1) Separation — individual is removed from their former status/group (e.g. leaving home for a vision quest). (2) Liminality — a threshold state, "betwixt and between," neither old nor new identity (e.g. time in the wilderness). (3) Incorporation — individual is reintegrated with a new status (e.g. returning as an adult). Turner later elaborated liminality, noting its creative potential and the communitas (solidarity) it generates.
Q: What is the difference between sex and gender in anthropological perspective?
A: Sex refers to biological categories (chromosomes, hormones, anatomy). Gender refers to culturally constructed roles, behaviors, and identities associated with sex. Margaret Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa and Sex and Temperament showed that what counts as masculine or feminine varies dramatically across cultures — proving gender is not biologically determined. Some cultures recognize more than two genders (e.g. hijra in South Asia, two-spirit in some Indigenous North American cultures).
Q: What is ethnographic fieldwork and what are its strengths and limitations?
A: Ethnographic fieldwork involves extended participant observation — living with and participating in the daily life of the group being studied. Strengths: rich, contextualized data; captures emic (insider) perspective; reveals what surveys miss. Limitations: small sample size limits generalizability; researcher presence affects behavior (observer effect); researcher's own culture shapes interpretation (positionality); ethical concerns about informed consent and representation. Modern ethnography is increasingly reflexive about these limitations.
Q: What are the three modes of exchange and what kind of society does each reflect?
A: Reciprocity (gift exchange) is characteristic of band and tribal societies — generalized reciprocity (sharing without expectation), balanced reciprocity (roughly equivalent return expected), negative reciprocity (each party tries to get the best deal). Redistribution involves a central authority (chief, state) collecting goods and redistributing them — characteristic of chiefdoms and states. Market exchange uses price mechanisms and is dominant in capitalist societies. All three coexist in complex societies.