Kottak Text Book Anthropology Part 2

Josephine Rees, 2013
Introduction to Anthropology
Kottak Chapter 6: Human

Variation and Adaptation
Race: A discredited concept in biology
Historically scientists have approached the study of human biological diversity
in 2 main ways: 1. Racial classification and 2. The current explanatory
approach, which focuses on understanding specific differences.
Racial classification: The attempt to assign humans to discrete categories
based on common ancestry (apparent common ancestry).
Explanations of diversity rather than pin holing people into categories.
Human groups do vary biologically.
What is race anyway? In theory, a biological race would be a geographically
isolated subdivision of a species. Such a subspecies would be capable of
interbreeding with other subspecies of the same species, but it would not
actually do so because of its geographic isolation.
A race is supposed to reflect shared genetic material (inherited from a common
ancestor) but early scholars instead used phenotypical traits (usually skin color)
for racial classification.
Phenotype = what you see on the outside.
Racial classifications based on phenotype raise the problem of deciding which
trait(s)should be primary.
Height? Weight? Body type? Facial features?
Races are not biologically distinct

Color based there are so many different skin color types.
Another thing is that some cultures dont fit neatly into one of the three types.
Many people in Southern India have dark skin but researchers have been
reluctant to classify them as black.
The San people have also been classified as having yellow skin to black skin,
so you cant just classify them into one category.
Genetic markers dont correlate with phenotype

The analysis of human DNA has fully 94% of human genetic variation occurs
within so-called races.
Considering conventional geographic racial groupings such as Africans,
Asians and Europeans, there is only about 6 percent variation in genes from
one group to the other.
There is much greater variation within each of the traditional races than
between them.
Contemporary work in genomics has allowed scientists to construct regional
and global phylogenetic trees based on shared genetic markers.
Such trees are based on mitochondrial DNA and the Y chromosome.
Haplogroup: lineage or branch of such a genetic tree marked by one or more
specific genetic mutations.
Although long-term genetic markers do exist, they dont correlate neatly with
phenotype.
Josephine Rees, 2013 1

These arent precisely or even necessarily correlated with genetic relationships.

Boas (1940/66) looked at the phenotype of children raised in the USA versus
their parents who had been raised in Europe. Migrants.
Not a change in genes, but the diet for example really influenced it.
Explaining skin color

Traditional racial classifications assumed that biological characteristics such as
skin color were determined by heredity and that they were stable (immutable)
over many generations.
We now know that biological similarity doesnt necessarily indicate recent
common ancestry.
Dark skin color, for example, can be shared by tropical Africans and
indigenous Australians for reasons other than common heredity.
Haplogroup: Lineage or branch of a genetic tree marked by one or more
specific gene mutations.
Classification to explanation: shift!
Natural selection, the process by which the forms most fit to survive and
reproduce in a given environment do so.
The less fit organisms die out over generations.
Skin color is a complex biological trait influenced by several genes.
Melanin is the primary determinant of human skin color.
It is a chemical substance manufactured in the epidermis, the outer layer of
sin.
The melanin cells of those with darker skin produce more than those with
lighter skin.
Melanin offers protection form sunburn and other skin conditions like skin
cancer.
Outside the tropics, skin color tends to be lighter.
Aside from migrations, how can we explain the geographic distribution of skin
color?
Natural selection. In the tropics, light skin color is an adaptive disadvantage.
In todays world, people manage to survive in the tropics even with light skin
because of products like sunscreen.
Clothing interferes with the bodys manufacture of vitamin D.
Shortage of vitamin D diminishes the absorption of calcium in the intestines. A
nutritional disease known as rickets, which softens and deforms the bones, may
develop.
Deformation of the pelvic bones can interfere with childbirth.
In cold northern states, white skin color maximizes the absorption of UV
radiation and the synthesis of vitamin D by the few parts of the body that are
exposed to direct sunlight.
There has been selection against dark skin color in northern areas because
melanin screens out UV radiation.
This natural selection continues today: East Asians who have migrated
recently from India and Pakistan to northern areas of the UK have higher
incidence of rickets/osteoporosis than the general British population.
Those in Alaska are not as pale as ghosts though because in terms of geological
time they havent been there for a long time.

People with A or AB blood are more susceptible to smallpox than people with
type B blood or type O.
In most populations, the O is more prevalent than A and B combined.
Type O was very susceptible to the bubonic plague.
In the case of diseases for which there are no cures, genetic resistance
maintains its significance.
There is genetic variation in susceptibility to the HIV virus.
Natural selection also affects facial features.
Long noses seem to be adaptive in arid areas, because membranes and blood
vessels inside the nose moisten the air as it is breathed in.
Long noses are also adaptive in cold environments, because blood vessels
warm the air as it is breathed in.
This nose form distances the brain, which is sensitive to bitter cold, from raw
outer air.
Before central heating!
Thomsons Nose Rule: association between nose form and temperature.
Other facial features also illustrate adaptation.
Tooth size (largest among Native Australian hunter gatherers).
Size and body build

Smaller individuals are often found in the warmer climates.
Relationship between body weight and temperature is summarized in
Bermanns rule: The smaller of two bodies similar in shape has more surface
area per unit of weight. Therefore, this sheds heat more efficiently.
Allens rule: states that the relative size of protruding body parts ears, tails,
bills, fingers, toes, limbs, etc. increases with temperature.
Tibetans: increase the oxygen intake by taking more breaths per minute than
do people who live at sea level.
Their lungs synthesize large amounts of nitric oxide from the air they breathe.
This works to expand the diameter of their blood vessels so that Tibetans offset
low oxygen content in their blood with increased blood flow.
Ethiopian highlanders, by contrast, use none of these mechanisms.
Lactose tolerance
Many biological traits that illustrate human adaptation are not under simple
genetic control.
Genetic determination of such traits may be likely but unconfirmed, or several
genes may interact to influence the trait in question.
Phenotypical adaptation: when adaptive changes occur during an individuals
lifetime.
Made possible with biological plasticity.
All milk in its source contains lactose.
The digestion of milk depends on an enzyme called lactase.
Which works in the small intestine.
Among all mammals except humans and some of their pets, lactase
production ceases after weaning so that the animals can no longer digest milk.
Lactase production and the ability to tolerate milk vary between populations.

90% of northern Europeans and their descendants are lactose tolerant: they
can digest several glasses of milk without difficulty.
Some populations can tolerate very little/no milk.
Others can metabolize larger quantities.
Human biology changes constantly.

Kottak Chapter 23: The World

System and Colonialism
Until industrialization
Introduction
Isolated groups are impossible to find today. Truly isolated societies probably
never existed. For thousands of years, humans have been in contact with each
other
Local societies have always participated in a larger system, which is called the
modern world system, a world in which nations are economically and
politically interdependent.
The World System

The world system and the relations among the countries within it are shaped
by the capitalist world economy.
Huge increase in international trade during and after the 15th century.
This led to the capitalist world economy (Wallerstein 1982).
Single world system committed to production for sale or exchange with the
object of maximizing profits rather than supplying domestic needs.
Capital: wealth or resources invested in business with the intent of using the
means of production to make a profit.
World-system theory can be traced to the work of Braudel.
Key claim is that an identifiable social system, based on wealth and power
differentials, extends beyond individual countries.
Formed by a set of economic and political relations.
The core: dominant position, includes the strongest and most powerful
nations. Sophisticated technologies.
The semi periphery: intermediate between the core and periphery.
Contemporary nations are industrialized, and export both industrial goods
and commodities.
Lack power and economic dominance of core nations.
Periphery: worlds least privileged and powerful countries. Economic activities
there are less mechanized than those in other peripheries, Produces raw
materials, agricultural commodities, and increasingly, human labor for export
to the core and the semipheriphery.
In the USA, legal/illegal immigration from the semi periphery supplies cheap
labor.
Eg. IBM (largest information technology company) employing many more in
India and laying off lots of people in Europe because its cheaper.
Skilled Western workers must compete now against well-educated workers in
such low-wage countries like India.
The emergence of the world system

By the 15th century Europeans were profiting from a transoceanic trade-

oriented economy, and people worldwide entered Europes sphere of
influence.
New: transatlantic component of a long history of Old World sailing and
commerce.
The Phoenicians/Carthaginians sailed around Britain on regular trade routes
that circumnavigated Africa.
Indonesia and Africa have been linked in Indian Ocean trade for at least 2000
years.
Christopher Columbus journeys opened the way for a major exchange of
people, resources, products, ideas and diseases, and the Old and New Worlds
were forever linked.
Europeans , led by Spain and Portugal, got gold/silver and conquered the
natives (taking some as slaves) and colonized their lands.
Previously in Europe and throughout the world, rural people had produced
mainly for their own needs, growing their own food and making clothing,
furniture and tools from local products. Production beyond immediate needs
was undertaken to pay taxes and to purchase trade items such as salt and iron.
Sugarcane was originally domesticated in Papua New Guinea, and sugar first
processed in India. Columbus brought it to the New World.
The demand for sugar in a growing international market spurred the
development of the transatlantic slave trade and New World plantation
economies based on slave labor.
By the 18th century an increased English demand for raw cotton led to rapid
settlement of what is now southeastern United States and the emergence there
of another slave=based monocrop production system.
Like sugar, cotton was a key trade item that fueled the growth of the world
system.
[Skipped a section as we had to]
Industrial Stratification
Stratification systems associated with industrialization.
Bourgeoisies: the owners of factories, mines, large farms and other means of
production.
Working class: made up of people who had to sell their labor to survive.
Industrialization hastened the processes of proletarianization the separation
of workers from the means of production.
Class consciousness.
Socioeconomic divisions.
Class division between owners and workers is worldwide.
Many American workers now have some proprietary interest in the means of
production.
The key difference is that the wealthy have control over these means.
Modern stratification systems arent simply and dichotomous.
Include (particularly in the core and semiperhiphery) a middle class of skilled
and professional workers.
The masses improve their access to economic benefits and political power.

Weber faulted Marx for an overly simple and exclusively economic view of
stratification.
Although, as Weber showed, wealth, power, and prestige are separate
components of social ranking, they end to be correlated.
Weber also believed that social identities based on ethnicity, religion, race,
nationality and other attributes could take priority over class.
The modern world system is cross-cut by collective identities based on
ethnicity, religion and nationality.
Although the capitalist class dominates politically in most countries, growing
wealth has made it easier for core nations to grant higher wages.
However the improvement in core workers living conditions wouldnt have
occurred without the world system.
The added surplus that comes from periphery allow score capitalists to
maintain their profits while satisfying ht demands of core workers.
In the periphery, wages and living standards are much lower.
Colonialism
World-system theory stresses the existence of a global culture.

Imperialism: policy of extending the rule of a country or empire over foreign
nations and of taking and holding foreign colonies.
Colonialism: the political, social, economic and cultural domination of a
territory and ins people by a foreign power for an extended time.
First phase of this came with the European Age of Discovery.
After 1492.
By 1898 most of Spains colonies were newly independent.
British colonialism
At its peak in 1914, British empire covered a fifth of the worlds land surface
and ruled a fourth of its population.
Shared the exploration of the New World with the Spanish, Portuguese,
French and Dutch.
The British by and large left Mexico, along with Central and South America,
to the Spanish and the Portuguese.
Seven Years War: 1763 forced a French retreat from most of Canada and
India.
The American Revolution ended the first stage of British colonialism.
British settle din Australia.
Victorian era (1837-1901).
Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli implemented a foreign policy justified by a
view of imperialism as shielding the white mans burden, coined by Rudyard
Kipling (poet).
After WWII the British Empire began to fall apart.
Decolonization in Africa and Asia accelerated during the late 1950s.
French colonialism
Two phases: 1. Explorations of the early 1600s. Prior to the French revolution
in 1789, missionaries, explores and traders carved out niches for France in

Canada, the Louisiana Territory, several Caribbean islands, and parts of

India.
All were lost along with Canada to Great Britain in 1763.
2. Foundations of the 2nd French empire were established between 1830 and
1870.
Sheer drive for profit led to expansion of the British, but French colonialism
was spurred more by the state, church, and armed forces than pure business
interests.
France acquired Algeria and part of Tunisia/Morocco.
French also sought international glory and prestige.
Indirect rule: governing through native leaders and direct rule where they
French imposed new government structures to control diverse societies, many
of them previously stateless.
Colonialism and identity

Hundreds of ethnic groups and tribes are colonial constructions.
The Sukuma of Tanzania, for instance, were first registered as a single tribe by
the colonial administration. Then missionaries standardized a series of dialects
into a single Sukuma language into which they translated the Bible and other
religious texts. Thereafter, those texts were taught in missionary schools and to
European foreigners and other non-Sukuma speakers.
Over times this standardized the Sukuma language and ethnicity.
As in most of East Africa, in Rwanda and Burundi farmers and herders live in
the same areas and speak the same language.
Postcolonial studies
Postcolonial: refers to the study of the interactions between European nations
and the societies they colonized.
Has also been used to describe the second half of the 20th century in general,
the period succeeding colonialism.
It may even more generally be used to signify a position against imperialism
and Euro centrism.
The former colonies can be divided into settler, nonsettler, and mixed.
Given the varied experiences of different countries (India, Australia, etc.) the
term postcolonial has become quite a loose term.
Research in postcolonial studies is growing, permitting a wide-ranging
investigation of power relations in varied contexts.
Development
During the Industrial Revolution, a strong current of thought viewed

industrialization as a beneficial process of organic development.
Intervention philosophy: an ideological justification for outsiders to guide
native peoples in specific directions.
Economic development plans also have intervention philosophies.
This belief that industrialization, modernization, Westernization and
individualism are desirable evolutionary advances and that development
schemes that promote them will prong long-term benefits to local people.

Neoliberalism
Neoliberalism: the current form of the classic economic liberalism laid out in
Adam Smiths famous manifesto of 1776.
Laissez-faire economics: the government should stay out o fits nations
economic affairs.
Free trade, Smith thought, was the best way for a nations economy to
develop. There should be no restrictions on manufacturing, no barriers to
commerce, and no tariffs.
This is called liberalism, where the economy is freed from government
controls.
It prevailed in the USA until President Franklin Roosevelts New Deal during
the 1930s.
The Great Depression produced a turn to Keynesian economics, which
challenged liberalism.
John Maynard Keynes insisted that full employment was necessary for
capitalism to grow, that governments and central banks should intervene to
increase employment, and that government should promote the common
good.
Especially since the fall of communism, there has been a revival of economic
liberalism, now know n as neoliberalism, which has been spreading globally.
Around the world, neoliberal policies have been imposed.
Neoliberalism entails open international trade and investment. Profits are
sought through lowering costs, whether through imploring productivity, laying
off workers, or seeking workers who accept lower wages.
The second world

First/second/third world labels are a rather ethnocentric way to categories.
Communism
communism (small c) describes the social system in which property is owned
by the community and which people work for the common good.
Large c Communism is the political movement and doctrine seeking to
overthrow capitalism and to establish a form of communism such as that
which prevailed in the USSR and China.
Communism originated with Russias Bolshevik revolution (1917) and took its
inspiration from Karl Marx.
Authoritarian, totalitarian.
Post socialist Transitions

Goal was to enhance (in USSR) production by substituting a decentralized
market system and providing incentives through privatization.
Yeltsins program of shock therapy would cut subsidies from farms and
industries and end price control. Since then the post socialist Russia has faced
many problems.
The anticipated gains in productivity did not materialize. After the fall of the
Soviet Union, Russias GDP fell by half.

Poverty increased with a quarter of the population sinking below the poverty
line.
Life expectancy, birth rate declined.
Corruption.
Corruption: the abuse of public office for private gain.
Assumes a clear distinction between the state and the private life.
This is an ethnocentric view.
Two spheres are described as operating in Russia at the moment: these
spheres do not mesh neatly with the assumptions of a public-private split. He
calls them the official-public sphere and the personal-public sphere, referring
to domains that coexist and sometimes overlap.
Sate officials may respect the law (official-public), while also working with
informal or even criminal groups (personal-public).
Officials switch all the time to accomplish certain tasks.
In post colonialist societies, what is legal (official-public) and what is considered
morally correct dont necessarily correspond.
No one will hold you at fault because everyone does it.
The world system today

Industrialization continues today, although nations have shifted their positions
within the world system.
By 1900 the USA had become a core nation and overtaken GB in iron, coal,
and cotton production.
Japan also changed (handicraft technology). Between 1945 and about 1975.
20th century industrialization added hundreds of new industries and millions of
new jobs.
Production increased, beyond immediate demand, advertising, etc.
Mass production, cultural consumption.
Energy consumption comparison in multiple cultures.
Since 1900 USA has tripled its energy use.
Industrial degradation
Industrialization and factory labor now characterize many societies in Latin
America, Africa, Pacific, and Asia.
Has led to destruction of indigenous economies/cultures.
Eg. Far more people used to live in politically independent bands, tribes, and
chiefdoms.
Genocide: a deliberate policy of exterminating a group through warfare or
murder.
Eg. the Holocaust, Rwanda in 1994, and Bosnia in the early 1990s.
Many native groups have been incorporated within nation states, in which
they have become ethnic minorities.
Some groups have been able to recoup their population.
Indigenous peoples: Original inhabitants of their territories.
Around the world many contemporary nations are repeating at an
accelerated rate the process of resource depletion that started in Europe and
the USA during the industrial revolution.


Kottak Chapter x: Cultural

Exchange and Survival
What is culture?
Enculturation: the process by which a child learns his/her culture.
Culture is learned
Human capacity to use symbols.
Humans are social animals, human capacity to learn.
People create, remember and deal with ideas.
Culture is a set of control mechanisms.

Kottak Chapter 17: Political

Systems
From chiefdoms
Chiefdoms
First states emerged in the Old World about 5,500 years ago. The first
chiefdoms developed perhaps a thousand years earlier, but few survive today.
State formation begin in Mesopotamia (Iran/Iraq).
Then Egypt, the Indus Valley of Pakistan and India, and northern China.
Then more.
The chiefdom and the state, like many types of categories used by social
scientists, are ideal types.
They are labels that make social contrasts seem sharper than they really are.
There Is a continuum from tribe to chiefdom to state.
Some societies have many attributes of chiefdoms but retain tribal features.
Continuous change.
Political and economic systems in chiefdoms

Areas with chiefdoms: the circum-Caribbean, Amazonia, Polynesia,
southeaster USA.
Much of Europe was at one point organized in a chiefdom level.
Stonehenge.
Much of our ethnographic knowledge about chiefdoms comes from Polynesia,
where they were common at the time of European exploration.
Social relations are mainly based on kinship, marriage, descent, age,
generation and gender (as they are in bands or tribes.
However, they are characterized by permanent political regulation (unlike bands
and tribes).
Chiefdoms might influence thousand sof people living in many villages and/or
hamlets.
Regulation was carried out by the chief and his or her assistants, who occupied
political offices.
Office: permanent position, which must be refilled whin it is vacated by
death/retirememnt.
Polynesian chiefdoms: chiefs were full-time political specialists in charge
oregulating the economy production, distribution, and consumption.
Polynesian chiefs relied on religion to buttress their authority. They regulated
production by commanding or prohibiting the cultiviation of certain land and
crops.
People offer part of their harvest to the chief who then redistributes it.
Chiefly redistribution: such a flow of resources to and then from a central
office.
Offers economic advantages if the different areas specialized in particular
crops, goods, or services, chiefly redistribuion made those products available to
the whole society.

Also played a role in risk management.

Helped in times of famine.
Social status in chiefdoms

Based on seniority of descent.
Because rank, power, prestige and resources came through kinship and
descent, Polynesian chiefs kept extremely long genealogies.
All the people in chiefdoms were thought to be related to each other.
Common ancestors.
Status of a chief was ascribed based on the seniority of descent. The chief
would be the oldest child of the oldest child of the oldest child, and so on.
Degrees of seniority calculated.
Begause everyone had a slightly different status it was difficult to draw a line
between elites and common people.
Status systems in chiefdoms and states

Similar
Both are based on differential access to resources.
Means that some of the men/women had privileged acces to power, prestige
and wealth. Controlled strategic sources like land and water.
States have a much firmer line between the elites and masses, distinguishing at
least between nobles and commoners.
Kinship didnt extend from the nobles to the commoners because of stratum
endogamy: marriage within ones own social group.
Division of society contrasts strongly with bands and tribes, whose status
systems are based on prestige, rather than on differential acess to resoures.
Presitge differentials that do exist in bands reflect specila qualities and abilities.
Good hunters get respect from their fellows as long as they are generous.
In tribes, some prestige goes to descent-group leaders, to village heads, and
especially to the big man.
However, all these figures must be generous.
In many tribes men have more prestige and power than women.
Gender contrast in rights.
Stratification
Chiefs would start acting like kings and try to erode the kinship basis of the
chiefdom.
Separate social strata created.
The presence and acceptance of stratification is one of the key distinguishing
features of the state.
Max Weber (1922) defined three related dimensions of social stratification: 1.
Economic status (wealth), 2. Power, 3. Prestige (on basis of social status, refers
to esteem, respect or approval for acts, deeds or qualities considered
exemplary).
Prestige provides people with a sense of worth and respect, which they may
often convert into eceonomic and political advantage.

In archaic states there were contrasts in wealth, power and prestige between
entire groups.
Each stratum included people of both sexes and all ages.
Superordinate: upper, privileged group in a stratified society.
Subortinate: lower, less privileged group in a stratified society.
Those born at the bottom of the hierarchy had reduced chances of social
mobility.
States
States tend to be large and populous, compared to bands, tribes and

chiefdoms.
Certain statuses, systems and subsystems with specialized functions are found
in all states. They include the following:
1. Population control.
2. Enforcement (permanent military/police forces)
3. Fiscal (taxation)
Population control
To know whom they govern, all states conduct censuses.
Demarcate boundaries that separate them from other societies. Coast guards,
immigration officers, etc.
Also controlled through administrative subdividison: provinces, districts,
states, countries, subcounties, and parishes.
Lower-level officials manage these subdivisions.
In nonstates people work/relax with people they have a personal relationship
with.
States foster geographic mobility and resettlement, severing long-standing ties
among people, alnda nd kin.
Population displacement.
States also manage their populations by graitning different rights and
obligations to citizens and noncitizens.
Status distinctions among citizens.
Judiciary
States have laws, enforced legal codes, based on precendent and legislative
progalamations.
Without writing, laws may be preserved in oral tradition, withjustices, elders
and other pseicalists responsible for remembering them.
Cirime are violations of the lgal code.
Speified punishments.
Conrast between states and nonstates is the intervention in family affairs: in
states, aspects of paenting and marriage enter the domain fo public law. States
attempt to curb internal conflict.
Enforcement
All states have agents to enforce judicial decisions.
Confinement rquires jailers and a death penalty calls for executioners.

Agents of the state collect fines and confiscate property. These officals wield
real power.
Fiscal systems
Neede din staes to suppor rulers, nobles, officials, judges, military personnel,
and thousands of other specialist.
State intervenes in pdorudtion, distribution and consumption.
In nonstates, people customarily share with relatives, but residents of states
face added obligations to bureaucrats and officals.
Citizens must turn over a substantial portion of what they produce to the state.
Of the resources that the state collects it reallocates part of the general good
and uses another part (often larger) for the elite.
The state does not bring more freedom or leisure to the common people,e who
usually work harder than the people of nonstates.
Markets and trade are usually under at least some state control., with officals
overseeing distribution and exchange, standardizing weights and measures,
and collecting taxes on goods passing in and through the state.
Social control
Bands, tribes, chiefdoms and states.

The Diwaniyas of Kuwait neighborhood male-only meeting places where
informal discussion shave formal consequences.
Like a town hall meeting in the USA the diwanya also provides a forum where
constituents can meet and consult with their parliamentary representatives.
Men sit on a U shaped couch.
Domination.
Social control: those fields of the social system that are most actively infolved
in the maintenance of any norms and the regulation of any conflict.
Hegemony
Hegemony: developed for a stratified social orer in which subordinates comply
with domination by internalizing their rulers values and accepting the
naturalness of domination (this is the way things were meant to be).
All hegemonic ideologies offer explanations about why the existing order is in
everyones interest.
Easier to dominate people in their minds than to try and control them in their
bodies.
Hegemony, the internatlization of a dominant ideology, os one way in which
elites curb resistance and maintain power.
Another way is to make subordinates believe that they one day will regain
power.
Weapons of the weak

Public transcript: to describe the open, public interactions between
superordinates and subordinates the outer shell of power relations.
Hidden transcript: describe the critique of power that goes on offstage,
where the power holders cant see it.

Individual an disguised rather than collective and defiant.

Often situations that seem to be hegemonic do have active resistance, but it is
individual and disguised rather than collective and defiant.
Subordiantes also use various strategies to resit publicly, but, again, usually in
disguised form.
Discontent may be expressed in public rituals and language, including
metaphors, euphemisms, and folk tales.
Resistance is most likely to be expressed openly when people are allowed to
assemble.
The hidden transciprt may be publicly revealed on such occasions.
Factors that interfere with community formation such as georaphic,
linguistic and ethnic separation also work to curb resistance.
Eg. Slaves in the USA were sought with diverse cultural and linguistic
bangrounds.
Hidden transcripts tend to be expressed publicly at certain times and in certain
places.
Because of its costumed anonymity, Carnaval is excellent arena for expressing
normally suppressed speech and aggression. Discourse.
Politics, shame and sorcery

Three forms of social control: political, religious and reputationsal systems.
Eg. Makua villagers (page 410, should probably read.)
The efficacy of social control depends on how clearly people envision the
sanctions that an anstisocail act might trigger.

Kottak Chapter 15: Ethnicity

and Race
Ethnic groups and ethnicity
Members of an ethnic group: share certain beliefs, values, habits, customs and
norms because of their common background.
They define themselves as different and psecial because of cultural features.
Ethnicity: means identification with, and feeling part of, an ethnic group and
exclusion from certain other groups because of this affiliation.
But issues of ethnicity can be complex.
Ethinc feelings and associated behavior vary in intensity within ethnic groups
and countries and over time.
Political changes reflect identifying with a particular ethnic group.
Status prestige
Status: any position that determines where someone fits in society.
Ascribed status: social status based on little or no choie.
Achieved status: social status based on choices or accomplishments.
Status shifting
Sometime statuses (particularly ascribed ones) are mutually exclusive.
Some statuses are contextual.
People can be black and Hispanic, or both a mother and a senator.
One identity is used in certain settings, another in a different one.
This is situational negotiation of social identity.
Ethnic identity is flexible.
Hispanics may move through levels of culture.
Hispanic is the fastest growing ethnic group.
Mexican/Cuban/Puerto Rican Americans have influenced this.
In many societies an ascribed status is associated with a position in the social-
political hierarchy.
Certain groups, minority groups, are subordinate.
They have inferior power and less secure access to resources than do majority
groups.
Race: ethnic group assumed to have a biological basis.
Racism: Discrimination against an ethnic group assumed to have a biological
basis.
Race and Ethnicity
Race, like ethnicity in general, is a cultural category rather than a biological

relatiy.
That is, ethnic groups including races, derive from contrasts perceived and
perpetuated in particular societies rather than from scientific classifications
based on common genes.
It is not possible to define human races biologically.

Only cultural constructions of race are possible.

(Even though the average person conceptualizes race in biological terms).
American culture doesnt draw a very clear line between ethnicity and race.
Difficulties in drawing a precise distinction between race and ethnicity.
Probably better to use the term ethnic group rather than race to describe any such
social group.
The social construction of race
Races are ethnic groups assumed (by members of a particular culture) to have
a biological basis but actually race is socially constructed.
Hypodescent
Descent: social identity based on ancestry
Hypodescent: children assigned to the same group as minority parent.
Race in the census

Some other race, black, white, and previously Irish.
Not us: Race in Japan

American culture ignores considerable diversity in biology, languge, and
geographic origin as it socially constructs race in the USA.
North Americans also overlook diversity by seeing Japan as one race, whereas
actually you have the Ainu, the Burakumin, the Okinawans.
Race is culturally constructed in Japan too.
Japanese mostly define themselves by opposition to thers, whether minority
groups in their own nation or outsiders anyone who is not us. The not us
should stay that way; assimilation generally is discouraged.
EXAMPLE OF KOREAN 3RD GENERATION DISTRICT NURSE.
Japanese culture regards certain ethnic groups as having a biological basis,
when there is actually no evidence that they do.
Burakumin population in Japan often have the worst jobs, lower income, etc.
Deceptive marriage can be ended if the Burakumin identity is discovered.
Family registry.
The Burakumin, like the blacks in the USA, are stratified class structured,
with differences in wealth, prestige, and power.
Phenotype and fluidity: Race in Brazil

Brazil has so many more racial labels.
Phenotype: expressed physical characteristics of an organism.
A Brazilian can change her race by changing dress/language/location etc.
and even attitude.
Mixed populations.
More information on page 346 that I should read.
Ethnic groups, nations and nationalities

Nation: society sharing a language, religion, history, territory, ancestry and

kinship.
State: stratified society with formal, central government.
Nation-state: an autonomous political entity; a country.
Colonialism: Long-term foreign domination of a territory and its people.
Ethnic tolerance and accommodation

Ethnic diversity may be assocated with positive group interaction and
coexistence or with conflict.
Assimilation
Assimilation: absorption of minorities within a dominant culture.
Nationalities: Ethnic groups that have, once had, or want their own country.
By assimilating the minority group adopts the patterns and normls of its host
culture to the point that it no longer exists as a separate cultural unit.
Some countries like Brazil are more assimilationist than others.
JAPAN IS NOT.
The plural society

Assimilation isnt inevitable, and there can be ethnic harmony without it.
Ethnic distinctions can persist despite generations of interethnic contact.
Study of three ethnic groups in Swat, Pakistan.
Plural society: a society combining ethnic contrasts, ecological specializiation
(i.e. the use of different environmental resources by each ethnic group) and the
economic interdependence of those groups.
In Barths view, ethnic boundaries are most stable and enduring when the
groups occupy different ecological niches.
That is, they make their living in different ways and dont compete.
Ideally, they should depend on each others activities and exchagnew tih one
antoher.
When different ethnic groups exploit the same ecological niche, the militarily
more powerful group will normally replace the weaker one.
If they exploit more or less the same niche, but the weaker group is better able
to use marginal environments, they also may coexist.
Given niche specialization, ethnic boundaries and interdependence can be
maintained, although the specific cultural features ofe ach group may change.
By shifting the analytic focus from individual cultures or ethnic groups to
relationships between cultures or ethnic groups, Barth has made important
contributions to ethnic studies.
Multiculturalism and ethnic identity

Multiculturalism: the view of cultural diversity in a country as something good
and desirable.
The multicultural model is the opposite of the assimilationist model, in which
minorities are expected to abandon their cultural traditions and values,
replacing them with those of the majority population.
The multicultural view encourages the practice of cultural-ethnic traditions.

A multicultural society socializes individuals not only into the dominant

culture but also into the ethnic culture.
In the USA and Canada multiculturalism is of growing importance.
This reflects the awareness that the number and size of ethnic groups have
grown dramatically in recent years.
If this trend continues, the ethnic composition of the USA will change
dramatically.
Many immigrants in classrooms at school in the USA.
Ethnic diversification, many states have reclaimed their ethnic identities, joint
ethnic clubs, etc.
Some groups are new, others have existed for decades.
Multiculturalims seeks ways for people to understand and interact that dont
depend on sameness but rather on respect for differences. Multiculturalism
stresses the interaction of ethnic groups and their contribution to the country.
It assumes that each group has something to offer and learn form others.
Several forces have propelled North America away from the assimilationist
model toward multiculturalism.
The global scale of modern migration introduces unparalleled ethnic variety to
host nations.
Multiculturalism is related to globalization: People use modern means of
transportation to migrate to nations whose lifestyles they learn about through
the media and from touritst who increasingly visit their own countries.
Migration is also fueled by rapid popuatlin growth, coupled with insufficient
jobs (both for educated and uneducated people) in the less-developed
countries.
As traditional rural economies decline or mechanize, displaced farmers move
to cities, where they and their children often are unable to find jobs. As people
in the less developed countries get better educations, they seek more skilled
employment.
They hope to partake of an international culture of consumption that includes
such modern amenities as refrigerators, televisions and automobiles.
In a world with growing rural-urban and transnational migration, ethnic
identites are used increasingly to form self-help organizations focused mainly
on enhancing the groups economic competitiveness.
People claim and express ethnic identites for political and economic reasons.
Much of the world is experiencing an ethnic revival.
Roots of ethnic conflict
Ethnicity, based on perceived cultural similarities and differences in a society

or nation, can be expressed in peaceful multiculturalism or in discrimination
or violent interethnic confrontation.
Culture can be both adaptive and maladaptive. The perception of cultural
differences can have disastrous effects on social interaction.
The roots of ethnic differentiation and therefore, potentially, of ethnic
conflict can be political, economic, religious, linguistic, cultural, or racial.

Why do ethnic differences often lead to conflict and violence? The causes
include a sense of injustice because of resource distribution, economic or
political competition.
Sunnis vs. Shiites with Saddam Hussein.
Prejudice and discrimination

Prejudice: means devaluing a group because of its assumed behavior, values,
capabilities, or attributes.
People are prejudiced when they hold stereotypes about groups and apply
them to individuals.
Stereotypes: fixed ideas, often unfavorable, about what members of a group
are like.
Discrimination: refers to policies at harm a group and its members.
Eg. Apartheid in South Africa.
Chips in the mosaic

Although the multicultural model is increasingly prominent in North America,
ethnic competition and conflict are also evident.
There is conflict between newer arrivals, for instance, Central Americans and
Koreans, and longer-established ethnic groups, such as African Americans.
Korean shops and things hard hit in Los Angeles (page 354).
Aftermaths of oppression
Fueling ethnic conflict are such forms of discrimination as genocide, forced
assimilation, ethnocide, and cultural colonialism.
The most extreme form of ethnic discrimination is genocide: the deliberate
elimination of a group through mass murder.
Ethnocide: destruction of cultures of certain ethnic groups.
Many countries have penalized or banned the language of a particular ethnic
group.
Ethnic explusion: aims at removing groups who are culturally different form a
country.
Eg. Uganda expelled 74,000 Asians in 1972.
Refugees: People who flee a country to escape persecution or war.
Genocide: Deliberate elimination of a group through mass murder.
Ethnocide: Destruction of cultures of certain ethnic groups.
Cultural colonialism: refers to internal domination by one group and its
culture and by communist ideology.
Eg. the domination of the former Soviet empire by Russian people, language
and culture and by communist ideology.
Regions controlled by Moscow.
With members of the dominant ethnic groups.
Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries were founded in 1991
and headquartered in Minsk, Belarus.
In Russia and other formerly Soviet nations, ethnic groups, have sought and
continue to seek, to forge separate and viable nation-states based on cultural
boundaries.

This celebration of ethnic autonomy is part of an ethnic florescence that is a

trend of the late 20th century and early 21st centuries.


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Josephine Rees, 2013

Kottak Chapter 6: Human

Races are not biologically distinct

Genetic markers dont correlate with phenotype

Josephine Rees, 2013 1

These arent precisely or even necessarily correlated with genetic relationships.

Explaining skin color

Josephine Rees, 2013 2

Size and body build

Josephine Rees, 2013 3

Josephine Rees, 2013 4

Kottak Chapter 23: The World

The World System

The emergence of the world system

Josephine Rees, 2013 5

By the 15th century Europeans were profiting from a transoceanic trade-

[Skipped a section as we had to]

Josephine Rees, 2013 6

World-system theory stresses the existence of a global culture.

Josephine Rees, 2013 7

Canada, the Louisiana Territory, several Caribbean islands, and parts of

Colonialism and identity

During the Industrial Revolution, a strong current of thought viewed

Josephine Rees, 2013 8

The second world

Post socialist Transitions

Josephine Rees, 2013 9

The world system today

Josephine Rees, 2013 10

Josephine Rees, 2013 11

Kottak Chapter x: Cultural

Josephine Rees, 2013 12

Kottak Chapter 17: Political

Political and economic systems in chiefdoms

Josephine Rees, 2013 13

Also played a role in risk management.

Social status in chiefdoms

Status systems in chiefdoms and states

Josephine Rees, 2013 14

States tend to be large and populous, compared to bands, tribes and

Josephine Rees, 2013 15

Bands, tribes, chiefdoms and states.

Weapons of the weak

Josephine Rees, 2013 16

Individual an disguised rather than collective and defiant.

Politics, shame and sorcery

Josephine Rees, 2013 17

Kottak Chapter 15: Ethnicity

Race and Ethnicity

Race, like ethnicity in general, is a cultural category rather than a biological

Josephine Rees, 2013 18

Only cultural constructions of race are possible.

The social construction of race

Race in the census

Not us: Race in Japan

Phenotype and fluidity: Race in Brazil

Ethnic groups, nations and nationalities

Josephine Rees, 2013 19

Nation: society sharing a language, religion, history, territory, ancestry and

Ethnic tolerance and accommodation

The plural society

Multiculturalism and ethnic identity

Josephine Rees, 2013 20

A multicultural society socializes individuals not only into the dominant