Anthropology In The Early-Twentieth-Century Contained Theories

In order to understand any culture, it is essential to acknowledge the importance of taking a holistic view. This approach, which gained recognition and validation in the twentieth century, stresses the importance of accounting for all of the components of a culture. The concept requires an understanding of each subsystem, which dictates certain aspects of the culture being studied. With this theory as basis for her approach, Myerhoff is faced with the difficult task of piecing together the many parts contributing to the formation of the culture at the Center, while simultaneously recognizing the distinctions between the acting subsystems. Sometimes it seems that realizing what leads to specific cultural constructs would be extremely difficult; this is especially the case with traits that have become so naturalized that only an outsider would recognize them as distinct and significant. That said, it is obvious that there are advantages to studying a completely exotic culture, as the majority of anthropologists do; however, Myerhoff chose to do her fieldwork in a culture that is centered

No individual can arrive at the threshold of his potentialities without a culture in which he participates. Conversely, no civilization has in it any element that the last analysis is not the contribution of an individual. Where else could any trait come from except from the behaviour of a man or a woman or a child? (253)

When I and two other people left class and walked to the Anthropology open house, we were stopped outside of the door to receive the paper. We were told we needed 6 other stamps in total to get the extra credit for the assignment. One stamp was given to use at the door.

Robert Wright’s Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny discusses the idea of biological evolution and cultural evolution that results to social and global structure, system, and perspective. In his introduction, Wright tells the readers about the concept of biological evolution where he argues that the human destiny begins with a chaotic formation of the society that aims to build a concrete structure in order to establish proper social, political, and moral culmination of sorts. Wright moves further into the idea of biological evolution in his discussion of the DNA, which he defines as the “secret of life.” Truly, the evolution of mankind is difficult to trace because of the complexity of the human body—particularly the construction of the DNA. Then, the author relates it to other structures and institutions like the politics, history, and even religion.

In the first paragraph, I selected to use a quotation from one of the assigned textbooks of my course. Since, the definition of a culture has been vague and there are wide ranges of different definitions that were explained by many anthropologists. Therefore, first of all, I used one citation from the Kottak’s book to integrate and define the view of culture.

Malinowski may have been the first to challenge how to study anthropology, but modernity and its need to create change, force social scientists to look outside the box and imagine how immense the word “culture” can be. Within Malinoski's Argonauts of the Western Pacific, he creates a bold, open-ended statement about anthropology that create subcategories; subcategories which span across any and all studies within it: “Imagine yourself (somewhere unfamiliar, in a foreign place, somewhere new)” (Malinowski 1922:4) – but one could argue that this quote encompasses all ethnographies, regardless of culture or background, and extends beyond the comprehension of the ancient and modern world, allowing anthropological analyses to branch off into many

In many anthropological studies, the scientists attempt to define a culture that is unknown to society. They go in and find people that are considered “other.” They pick apart and analyze everything that they find. All of the articles we have read and discussed in class do this. In this paper, I will show you how the directors and anthropologists do this.

In answering this question, this paper is outlined on discussing a brief introduction as to what is human variation on the point of view of anthropology and a scientific and historical presentation as to how it affected the socio-political situation of the

This view, was that cultures developed similarly, and towards the same goal, e.g. western culture. Evolutionary anthropologist applied this model to track cultures throughout time, from simple to complex states. By looking at primitive contemporary cultures, they believed they were given a glimpse back in time at their own cultural development. This evolutionary progression of society had been accepted for some

Bronislaw Malinowski is arguably the most influential anthropologist of the 20th century, certainly for British social anthropology. Malinowski saw himself as effecting a revolution in anthropology by rejecting the evolutionary paradigm of his predecessors and introducing functionalism, whereby institutions satisfied human biological need, as the way to understand other cultures. I argue that his lasting legacy, however, is methodological rather than theoretical. Although not the first to conduct fieldwork, his lengthy stay among the Trobriand islanders during World War 1 enabled him to study their culture and cover a wide range of topics, from economics to sexuality. He contributed to ethnography and fieldwork by living with the people he studied, getting to know them personally, participating in their activities, and conducting his research in the field has since become known as ‘participant observation’.

Benedict’s Patterns of Culture introduced the non-anthropologist to cultural relativity and the socially constructed nature of race in the 1930s post World War era. Beyond political agenda, Benedict offers a theory of culture that attempts to explain how individual behavior is molded by the overarching ethos or spirit of a culture. Benedict argues that culture exists as patterns, which are dominant themes woven throughout cultural institutions that have their own goals and ambitions. These themes determine culturally appropriate behavior by selecting from a metaphorical ‘arc’ of behavioral potentialities that comply with its chosen theme (Benedict 1934:35). In this way, cultural institutions do not exist simply to meet physiological or psychological needs but rather are articulations of a culture’s goals or

*****In early anthropology, the mode of operation was to study the beliefs and practices of different cultures then observe the relations they had with each other. While studying culture, anthropologists observed many similarities in the traits and the material culture among different societies. As said by the founder of the ASW (Anthropological Society of Washington) in 1895: “Even among peoples geographically far apart, often being different forms of mankind, we find phrases, arts, industry, social styles and customs, folk-tales, beliefs and Gods, and even literatures very much alike” (O. T. Mason, 1895a: 14). Societies or cultures were consequently classed according to their ‘advancement’ these classes came to be interpreted as stages in the evolution civilization. Societies would have evolved from a simple primitive lifestyle to a barbaric one and finally to modern society. This is now known as the evolutionary social theories (Teggart, 1949; Watson, 1953; Burrow, 1968; Harris, 1968; Meek, 1976; Bowler, 1983).

The theories of Culture and Personality and Functionalism addressed and rebutted many of the more quaint aspects of the Evolutionary and Diffusionist theories of the nineteenth century. The methodology developed by these pioneers is still in use by anthropologists today. That is, participant observation and a complete involvement in the culture and language of the people being

Ruth Benedict once wrote, “The adequate study of culture, our own and those on the opposite side of the globe, can press on to fulfillment only as we learn today from the humanities as well as from the scientists.” (Benedict 2011). Anthropology, as a discipline, is concerned with what it means to be human and seeks to address this study by understanding past and modern cultures across the globe, as well as language, human biology, and our evolutionary history. Considering the rather holistic approach anthropology takes when studying the human condition, it provides anthropologists with certain strengths and skills that put them in a special position to be greatly beneficial to research studies. But why should people—be they scholars, policymakers, funders, service providers, or the greater community—trust anthropologists? To address this question, this paper will discuss the ways in which research epistemology, methodologies, and confidence measures contribute to the quality and credibility of anthropological research, as well as how anthropology as a whole benefits and enhances other disciplines in research endeavors.

Kroeber and Kluckhohn (1962) identify over 150 scientific definitions of the concept of culture. Indeed, many authors have tried to define culture and this is why there are so many definitions and that a unique one is hard to find. First of all, Kroeber and Kluckholn (1952) assume that culture is a suite of patterns, implicit and explicit, “of and for behaviour acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievements of human groups, including their embodiments in artefacts” (p.47). Later, Hofstede adds that culture is “the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one category of people from another” (Hofstede, 1991, p.51). This definition is the most widely accepted one amongst practitioners. For Winthrop (1991), culture is the distinctive models of thoughts, actions and values that composed members of a society or a social group. In other words,