Chapter 1

Anthropology and Human Diversity

Cultural anthropology: the comparative study of human societies and cultures.
→ goal: describe, analyze, and explain different cultures to show how groups have adapted
to their environments and given significance to their lives. To comprehend the entire human
experience.
Anthropology is holistic, it combines the study of human biology, history, and the learned
and shared patterns of human behaviour and thought in order to analyze groups.

Divisions of anthropology:
- Biological or Physical anthropology:
Our capacity for culture and human adaptation is grounded in our biological history and
physical makeup. Focus: aspects of humanity that are genetically inherited (human
evolution). Subspecialty: human variation, concerned with mapping physical differences
- Linguistic anthropology:
Concerned with understanding language and its relation to culture (structured, learned).
- Archaeology:
Focus: reconstructruction of past cultures based on their material remains or artifacts.
Subfield: cultural resource management; protection and management of resources.
- Cultural anthropology:
1. Ethnography: description of a society or culture (emic or etic).
2. Ethnology: attempt to find general principles or laws that govern cultural
phenomena.
- Applied anthropology:
The application of anthropology to the solution of human problems.

Issues in Anthropology:
- Ethnocentrism: judging other cultures from the perspectives of one’s own culture
(subjectivism, the idea of one’s own culture being superior = results in racism).
- Cultural relativism: cultures should be analyzed with reference to their own histories
and values, in terms of the cultural whole. rather than according to the values of
another culture. Understand the values and customs as in terms of the culture of
which they are part.
→ different from moral relativism; understanding cultures on their own
terms does not imply approval of them.
- Human Biological Diversity and Race: humans are incredibly biological similar,
except when looking at the variation in human form (length, colour, build), geography
is of importance when looking at biological diversity and traits.
→ biopsychological equality
Systems of racial classification are understood by reflecting history and social
hierarchy rather than biology. There is no such thing as different races.
- Anthropologists and ‘’Natives’’: and the question whether they accepted to be
investigated, and to what extent they had to be concerned with being
contradicted/giving out sensitive information and the political and social implications
of their work. The conditions affected the descriptions of societies.
- Anthropology and Globalization: no place is truly isolated, and the
connection/relationship has to be investigated. Globalization has changed the ways
in which anthropologists work and has politicized the work. Additionally the work has
become more specific.
Chapter 2

1
 Doing Cultural Anthropology
Ethnography: gathering and interpretation of information based on intensive, firsthand study
of a particular culture.
‘’Armchair anthropologists’’ (Morgan & Tylor) referred to simpler societies as ‘’living fossils’’,
stating that these were the unchanging primitive state of the complex current societies,
making a scale of increasing complexity.

Franz Boas: most important critic of evolutionary anthropology, which was intellectually
flawed and morally defective. He became an advocate of fieldwork. ‘’Cultures are the
products of their own histories.’’ (cultural relativism) One has to suspend judgment to
understand the logic and dynamics of other cultures.
Malinowski, studying the Trobriand Islands, tried understanding the native lifeways by
immersing himself in the culture (learning language, patterns of thought, traditions). He
emphasized the notion of function (the need/contribution of practices to the stability and
maintenance of the society).

Anthropological Techniques: Fieldwork (interviewing, filming, historical archives), mostly

through participant observation, often causes culture shock.

Emic perspective: to understand how the cultures look from the inside, trying to gain a
sense of what it might be like to be a member of a culture.
Etic perspective: to seek principles or rules that explain the behaviour of members of a
culture, examining societies using concepts, categories and rules derived from science.

Feminist Anthropology, up until the upswing of female anthropologist, mostly their male-
counterparts were the focus on the societies that had been studies, because for their male
colleagues it was difficult to examine the segregated inaccessible lives of women.
Additionally, men’s activities were often assumed as more important and they were far more
public than that of women. Conclusively, there was a systematic bias in anthropological data
and understandings.
Postmodernism, focuses on issues of power and voice and suggests that anthropological
accounts are partial truths reflecting the background, training and social position of their
authors (subjectiveness).
Engaged and Collaborative Anthropology, includes political action as a major goal of
fieldwork, while working together with their subject to shape the study. Anthropologists want
to actively promote the interests and welfare of the community.

Ethical Considerations:
- Obligations to the people they study and the people with whom they work;
- Safeguarding rights, interests and sensitivities of those studied;
- Explaining the examination thoroughly;
- Not exploiting individual informants for personal gain;
- Communicate the results to the individuals/group affected and the general public;
- Informed consent (participants should understand the investigation);
- Do not endanger research prospects/lives by violating ethics of the community;
- Add to the general store of anthropological knowledge (publish).
→ evokes question whether the principles can be met under conditions of warfare
(military).

Chapter 3
The Idea of Culture
2
Culture: everything humans perceive, know, think, value, feel and do is learned through
participation in a sociocultural system. The learned behaviours and symbols that allow
people to live in groups. The primary means by which humans adapt to their environments.
The way of life characteristic of a particular human society.
● Cultures are symbolic systems, mental templates for organizing the world.
● It is a web of significance that gives meaning to our lives and actions.
● Cultures, like biological organisms, can be thought of as systems composed of
interrelated parts: changes in one aspect of culture result in other changes as well.

Six characteristics:
1. Cultures are made up of learned behaviours;
2. Cultures all involve symbol;
3. Cultures are to some degree patterned and integrated;
4. Cultures are in some way shared by members of a group;
5. Cultures are in some way adaptive;
6. All cultures are subject to change.

Culture and personality theory: an anthropological perspective that focuses on culture as

the principal force in shaping the typical personality of a society as well as on the role of
personality in the maintenance of cultural institutions.

Ethnoscience: a theoretical approach that focuses on the ways in which members of a

culture classify their world, and holds that anthropology should be the study of cultural
systems of classification.

Cognitive anthropology: a theoretical approach that defines culture in terms of the rules
and meaning underlying human behaviour, rather than the behaviour itself.
Structural anthropology (Lévi-Strauss): a theoretical perspective that holds that all cultures
reflect similar deep, underlying patterns and that anthropologists should attempt to decipher
these patterns.
Interpretive anthropology (Clifford Geertz): a theoretical approach that emphasizes culture
as a system of meaning and proposes that the aim of cultural anthropology is to interpret the
meanings that cultural acts have for their participants.
Functionalism (Radcliffe-Brown and Malinowski): the anthropological theory that specific
cultural institutions function to support the structure of society or serve the needs of
individuals in society (comparing societies with bodies).
Ecological functionalism: a perspective that holds that the ways in which cultural
institutions work can best be understood by examining their effects on the environment.
Neo-Marxism: a theoretical perspective concerned with applying the insights of Marx:
conflict is a key factor driving social change.

Enculturation: the process of learning to be a member of a particular group.

Norms: an ideal cultural pattern that influences behaviour in a society, or shared ideas
about the way things ought to be done.
Values: a cultural defined idea about what is true, right, and beautiful.
Subculture: a system of perceptions, values, beliefs and customs that are significantly
different from those of a larger, dominant culture within the same society.

Adaptation: a change in the biological structure or lifeways of an individual or population by

which it becomes better fitted to survive and reproduce in its environment. Cultural

3
adaptation has advantages of speed and flexibility but disadvantages of misinformation and
maladaptive practices.
Plasticity: the ability of humans to change their behaviour in response to a wide range of
environmental demands. It has allowed humans to thrive under a wide variety of ecological
conditions.

Innovation: a new variation on an existing cultural pattern.

Diffusion: the spread of elements from one culture to another.
→ both depend on cultural context.
Transculturation: the transformation of adopted cultural traits, resulting in new cultural
forms.

4
 Chapter 5
Making a Living
Subsistence strategies: the way in which societies transform environment resources into
food.
● The productivity of any particular environment is related to the type of technology
used to exploit it.
● Human technologies → increase in population density → intensified effect
on the environment.
● Many foraging and pastoral populations resist abandoning the occupations for
cultivation, because they prefer the economic, social and psychological satisfactions
of their way of life.
● Increasingly complex technology and industrialism brought both social and
environmental problems.
● Earlier societies lived in very close contact with the natural world.
● European culture affected the environment through colonialism.

Different physical environments present different problems, opportunities, and limitations to

human populations, the subsistence patterns develop in response to these.

Types of Subsistence Strategies:

1) Foraging;
The reliance on food naturally available in the environment and acquired through
hunting, fishing and gathering. i.e. Inuit. They have little hierarchy.
2) Pastoralism;
The reliance on herd animals, they also cultivate crops or develop trading relations.
These societies are more and more under pressure to conform to the state. It is
actually a mixed subsistence strategy: most have access to grains or trade.
1) Nomadic pastoralists (based on patrilineal kinship) move with their herds
2) Transhumant pastoralists establish permanent villages and part of the population
moves with the herd, i.e. Maasai, who depend on their knowledge of the environment
and who also trade: challenged by tourism.
3) Horticulture;
The reliance on gardens and fields, typically a tropical forest adaptation which
requires the cutting and burning (swidden) of the jungle to clear areas for cultivation.
4) Agriculture;
A form of food production in which fields are in permanent cultivation using plows,
animals, and techniques of soil and water control. They farm on stable fields using
crop rotation and fertilization to maintain land fertility.
5) Industrialism;
A system in which mechanical and chemical processes are used for the production of
goods, which requires a large, mobile labour force. It has resulted in material
prosperity for many but also a lot of inequality and environmental destruction.
→ Industrialism has led to vastly increased population growth, expanded
consumption, expansion of trade, occupational specialization and shift to
wage labor.
Globalization: the integration of resources, labour and capital into a global network.

Each subsistence strategy generally supports a characteristic level of population density,

productivity and efficiency, which all tend to be associated with forms of social organization
and certain cultural patterns.

5
The global marketplace: The contemporary world is characterized by connectedness and
change, the opportunities that the expansion of the global economy has given are not
equally available.
Peasants are cultivators who produce mainly for the subsistence of their households but are
also integrated into larger, complex state societies. Agriculture is the main source of
subsistence, but they also participate in a larger economy of the state (i.e. Musha in Egypt).

Transportation of food involves an enormous amount more carbon dioxide and as our
dependence on imported food increases, so does our reliance on the fuel necessary to move
it. Therefore, a change in the price of oil could result in a large increase in the price of food.
Buying globally means less work for local producers and hence contributes to rural poverty.

6
 Chapter 6
Economics
Economic system: the norms governing production, distribution, and consumption of goods
and services within a society (‘’a series of fundamental issues all societies must face’’).
Economics: the study of ways in which the choices people make combine to determine how
their society uses its scarce resources to produce and distribute goods and services.
→ people everywhere make rational choices based on their needs and their
guesses about the future: ‘’what motivates you?’’

Productive resources: material goods, natural resources, or information used to create

other goods or information. Or in other words, the things that members of a society need to
participate in the economy and access to them is basic to every culture, i.e. labour, land and
knowledge.
In general, as social complexity increases, access to productive resources becomes more
restricted.
● Foragers: all people have access to all resources (weapons, tools & knowledge).
They require freedom of movement not only as a condition of success in their search
for food, but also as a way of dealing with social conflict.
● Pastoralists: ownership of animals is vested in families and kin groups. All members
share equal access to pastures. The prosperity and status of a family are linked to
the number of animals they own.
● Horticulturalists: people may control land in which they have invested labour. Land
tends to be communally owned by an extended kin group, although the rights to use
a piece of land may be given to households or individuals.
● Agriculturalists: specific individuals own many productive resources, which take
different forms (i.e. complicated tools and technological knowledge to make them).
→ Usufruct: the right to use a piece of land and pass it to descendants, not for trade.

Current-day wealthy societies have extremely high degrees of specialization, which creates
great efficiency but involves changing notions of identity and often has heavy human costs.

In small-scale preindustrial and peasant economies, the household or some extended kin
group is the basic unit of production and of consumption.
Household: a group of people united by kinship or other links who share a residence and
organize production, consumption, and distribution among themselves.
Firm: institution composed of kin and/or nonkin that is organized primarily for financial gain.
Individuals are tied through the sale of their labour for wages, thus labour as commodity.
They are geared towards economic growth.

Reciprocity: a mutual give-and-take among people of equal status

● Generalized reciprocity: giving and receiving goods with no immediate or specific
return expected. Often done without any thought of economic or self-interest. (i.e.
parents - kids).
● Balanced reciprocity: the giving and receiving of goods of nearly equal value with a
clear obligation of a return gift within a specified time limit. It is the dominant form of
exchange among non-industrialized people without market economies.
● Negative reciprocity: exchange conducted for the purpose of material advantage
and the desire to get something for nothing (gambling, theft, cheating). It is
characteristic of both impersonal and unfriendly transactions.

7
Redistribution: exchange in which goods are collected and then distributed to members of
a group. It involves a social center to which goods are brought and from which they are
distributed. It is especially important in horticultural societies where political organization
includes big men. Also occurs in chiefdoms, but then there is a distinct hierarchy involved
Leveling mechanism: a practice, value, or form of social organization that evens out wealth
within a society. They ensure that social goals are considered along with economic ones.

Market exchange: an economic system in which goods and services are bought and sold at
a money price determined primarily by the forces of supply and demand. It is impersonal and
occurs without regard to the social position of the participants. Individuals participate freely in
a market, choosing what they buy and sell (but not like always).

Capitalism: an economic system in which people work for wages, land and capital goods
are privately owned, and capital is invested in profit. Productive resources become capital
when they are used with the primary goal of increasing their owner’s financial wealth.
1. The resources are owned by a small portion of the population;
2. Most individuals’ primary resource is their labour;
3. The value of workers’ contribution to production is always intended to be
greater than the wages they receive → profit.
Capitalism always occurs within the context of other social relationships. It provides a
greater number of goods and services to larger populations, but at a cost: inequality.
The overwhelming power of international capitalism connects and alters cultures in new
ways.

The ways in which we organize our economy are the result of history, politics, economics,
and individual choices - a creation of culture, not natural law.

8
 Chapter 7
Kinship
Kinship: a culturally defined relationship established on the basis of blood ties or through
marriage. Plays an important role in determining people’s rights, responsibilities and wealth.
→ the way of classifying kin within societies are cultural, which have three basic
functions:
1. Kinship provides continuity between generations;
2. Society must provide the transmission of property and social position between
generations;
3. Kinship defines a universe of others on whom a person can depend for aid.
*consanguineal kin: relatives by blood.

Descent: the culturally established affiliation between a child and parents.

- Unilineal: descent group membership based on links through either the maternal
(matrilineal descent) or the paternal line (patrilineal descent), but not both;
- Bilateral: system of descent under which individuals are equally affiliated with both
parents’ descent groups.

[continuation of descent groups: page 151 till 158]

In all societies, kin are referred to by special terms. Kinship systems vary in the degree to
which they have different kinship terms for different relatives. The ways in which kin are
classified are associated with the roles they play in society. Kinship classification systems
are also related to other aspects of culture: the type of social groups that are formed, the
systems of marriage and inheritance and even deeper and broader cultural values.
Kinship systems use the metaphor of biology, but they are social systems.

Comparing India and US: Northern Indians have more kinship terms and their system
reflects two principles that are absent in America: 1) relative age, and 2) differentiating the
mother’s and father’s family (=bifurcation).

Principles for classifying Kin:

- Generation;
- Relative Age (difference between kinship terms and age);
- Lineality vs. Collaterality (with or without kin relation in a line/direct ascendants);
- Gender;
- Consanguineal vs. Affinal Kin (distinction between relation by blood or marriage);
- Side of the Family (bifurcation);
- Sex of Linking Relative (parallel/cross-cousins).

Types of Kinship Systems (p.162-164):

1. Hawaiian;
2. Eskimo;
3. Iroquois;
4. Omaha;
5. Crow;
6. Sudanese.

Transnationalism: the pattern of close ties and frequent visits by immigrants to their home
countries. They move culture, money and information around the world.
Chapter 8
9
 Marriage, Family, and Domestic Groups
Marriage: the customs, rules, and obligations that establish a socially endorsed relationship
between adults and children, between the kin groups of the married partners.
‘’Universal’’: An institution that establishes the legitimacy or status rights of children.
→ has a variation of forms, which makes it difficult to find one definition (i.e.
homosexuality).
Any definition of either marriage or family finds many exceptions.

Certain rules in certain societies:

- Incest taboo (prohibition of sexual relations between relatives);
→ difference between cross cousins and parallel cousins through social
relationship.
1) Biological theory: incest taboo prevents inbreeding that would have
deleterious effect on humanity (increasing birth defects);
2) Psychological theory: we have an innate aversion to those with whom we
are raised or that sexual competition within kin’s would create disruption and
confusion;
3) Sociological theory: incest taboos force families to marry outside of their
group, which creates bonds between social groups needed to survive.
- Encourage/prohibit marriage between members of certain groups;
- Amount of spouses;
+ monogamy: permits a person to be married to only one spouse at a time;
+ polygamy: allowing more than one spouse;
+ polygyny: permitting a man to have more than one wife at a time;
+ sororal polygyny: a man marries multiple sisters, who get along easier;
+ polyandry: marriage of one wife to several husbands.
- What happens when a partner dies;
- Arranged marriage (choice of mate linked to the family and the linking of kin groups);

Exogamy: a rule specifying that a person must marry outside a particular group.
→ descent groups based on blood relationship or some villages.
Endogamy: a rule prescribing that a person must marry within a particular group.
→ to keep the privileges and wealth of the group intact (i.e. royalty/India).

Levirate: the custom whereby a man marries the widow of a deceased brother.
Sororate: the custom whereby, when a man’s wife dies, her sister is given to him as a wife.
→ both signify the importance of marriage as an alliance between groups rather
than individuals, thus group alliances are maintained even in the event of death.

Kinds of exchanges in marriage:

1) Bride service: the cultural rule that a man must work for his bride’s family for a
length of time either before or after marriage;
2) Bridewealth: goods presented by the groom’s kin to the bride’s kin to legitimize a
marriage;
3) Dowry: presentation of goods by the bride’s kin to the family of the groom or the
couple.

Nuclear family: a family organized around the conjugal tie and consisting of a husband, wife
and children. Most often established in an independent household = neolocal residence.
More often the exception: adoption, divorce, single-parents, non-married (or just cohabiting).

10
Blended family: kinship networks occasioned by divorce and remarriage (i.e. in the US) that
include the previously divorced spouses and their new marriage partners.
Composite (compound) family: an aggregate of nuclear families linked by a common
spouse (the case with polygyny).
Extended (consanguineal) family: family based on blood relations extending over three or
more generations (either patrilineal or matrilineal).
- Patrilineal descent group:
Membership is based on links through the father only. Sons and daughters are
members of their father’s descent group, as are the childrens of the sons, but not of
the daughters. Often have patrilocal residence (brides live with the husband's
family).
→ the daughters marry into (are owned by) a different descent group.
- Matrilineal descent group:
Membership in the group is defined by links through the mother. Sons and daughters
are members of their mother’s descent group, as are the children of daughters, but
not the children of sons. Often have matrilocal/avunculocal* residence.
*avunculocal = system under which a married couple lives with the husband’s mother’s
brother.

Family structures have faced challenges from increased globalization, governmental policies
and new technologies. Population increase, the spread of global capitalism, and urbanization
have changed the nature of the family. Marriage and childbearing are decreasing, because
the costs of raising and educating a child has become very high.

11
 Chapter 9
Gender
Sex: The biological difference between male and female (i.e. genitalia).
Gender: A cultural construction that makes biological and physical differences between male
and female into socially meaningful categories (= cultural and social classification).
Anthropologists emphasize gender relations as a basic building block of culture and society.
● Every culture recognizes a difference between male and female, but the meaning
attached to this classification differs.

Cultural construction of gender: the idea that gender characteristics are the result of
historical, economic, and political forces acting within each culture. Focuses on historical
changes in gender relations, the role of gender in human development, constructions of
feminine/masculine and the connections between gender systems.
● Until the 1970s, the assumption was that roles / behaviours / personality / emotions /
characteristics /development of men and women were functional of sex differences,
thus universal.
● Ideas about distinctions in sexuality are often used to justify gender hierarchy.
● Example: Andalusia, Spain, in which male control of female sexuality is central, or in
other words men are superior to women due to Adam and Eve’s story (early
christianity). ‘’Women belong to the home’’ They can turn on their husbands and ruin
their honour.

Some cultures (i.e Bugis in Indonesia) recognize more genders or more sexes. In our society
we state that sex is a permanent aspect of personal identity, however, this idea is a cultural
construction. (i.e. female husbands among the Igbo of Nigeria).
● Alternative gender roles - neither man nor woman - have been described for many
societies. Take for example from the Native Americans: the two spirits.
Cultures differ in 1) whether this variation is recognized, 2) whether it is ritualized or not, 3)
degree to which sex and gender transformations are considered complete, 4) association of
sex and gender transformations, 5) special functions of alternative sexes and genders, and
6) the value or stigma placed on such variations.

Every aspect of human sexual activity is patterned by culture and influenced by learning:
1) The habitual responses of different peoples to different parts of the body (i.e. kissing);
2) The patterns of social and sexual preliminaries differ;
3) The appropriate sexual partner (i.e. same sex);
4) The ages in which sexual response is believed to begin and end;
5) The way people make themselves attractive;
6) The importance put on sexual activity;
7) Its variation according to gender.

Initiation (to adult status): a formal ritual process that moves individuals from child status
to adult status, which are closely tied to gender identification.
- Male initiation:
Express and affirm the structure of male relationships and male solidarity and sometimes
serve to validate male dominance. Often through periods of separation, that emphasizes the
membership of a group larger than the family, to learn about the beliefs, skills and
knowledge that is deemed necessary. Psychological theories deal with the relation between
the boys and their mothers and the notion of fertility.
- Female initiation:

12
Happens more often, but with much cross-cultural variability. Similar to male initiation:
transmission of cultural skills and traditions, social importance of publicly moving to another
status and the channeling of sexuality into adult reproduction. Analysis of female initiation
provides insights into the ritual manipulations of the body, which is also concerned with
sexuality, beauty and power.

A ‘’Real Man’’ = someone who proves himself to be virile, who controls women, daring,
heroic and who is successful in competition with other men. Manhood is something that
must be sought after through rigorous tests of skill, endurance, or power. ‘’Act like a man’’ is
often used in mainly cultures. Within cultures, there are almost always numerous roles men
play and issues of male prestige are important.

Gender Relations (emphasis on the gender hierarchy and women’s status):

Gender roles: the cultural expectations of men and women in a particular society, including
the division of labour, or in other words the entire range of the inner and outer life that
characterizes human nature and society.
Gender hierarchy: the ways in which gendered activities and attributes are differentially
valued and related to the distribution of resources, prestige, and power in a society.
Private/public dichotomy: a gender system in which women’s status is lowered by their
almost exclusive cultural identification with the home and children, whereas men are
identified with public, prestigious, economic, and political roles.
● Evoked question: Does this dichotomy only exist in Western societies? And if no, did
the other societies started with dichotomy after colonisation or not?
● Many anthropologists try to understand the cultural variability in male dominance.

→ Sanday (1981): Male dominance was not universal, but correlated with
ecological stress and welfare.
→ Gender hierarchies are culturally, not biologically, determined.
→ Difficulty with generalizing, because each cultural situation is complex and
unique.

1) Foraging Societies (hunters):

‘Man primarily hunt and women gather’, these societies are less black and white than many
might believe. Women play an important role in provisioning in these societies, often through
gathering or hunting (small) animals, they often carry the nursing infants on their backs while
doing so. These societies rely heavily on women’s economic contributions, however men still
have greater prestige and power.
Example: The Tlingit, a native American foraging group, has roles which are structured more
on the basis of individual ability, training, and personality than on the basis of gender.

2) Horticultural Societies (garden cultivation):

Wide range of gender relationships depending on the society's place with a wide variety in
the sexual division of labour. There is a high degree of segregation between the sexes,
paralleled by the importance of males in ritual (often thus male dominance). Additionally, the
solidarity of women in societies is usually not formalized in cults or association, but based on
cooperation found in domestic life.
→ European impact generally had the impact of declining women’s role.

3) Pastoral Societies:

13
Most often male dominated, partly based on men’s strength. Do not necessarily have a rigid
distinction between public and domestic roles, therefore somewhat blurring the private/public
dichotomy. Men do own all the livestock, the source of power and prestige. However, there
is considerable variation within this type of society (i.e. the Tuareg of the central Sahara).

4) Agricultural Societies:
Often shows the principle that women lose status in society as the importance of their
economic contribution declines. They are often not as involved in food production, thus their
social status is lower (again, there is variation). Men control the machinery or they receive
the wage for labor, they have greater access to the cash economy and become less
independent on women (while they become more independent on men). Foreign aid often
only worsens the problem and increases the gender inequality.

5) A Global Economy:
Women’s status in modern, stratified societies vary enormously and are affected by
economic development, political ideology and globalization. Women often benefit financially
from the industrial opportunities, such as factory labour, these benefits come at a high price
as they are exploited.

14
 Chapter 10
Political Organization
Political organization: refers to the patterned ways in which power and authority are used
in a society to regulate behaviour.
→ Inequalities exist in all societies (difference in talents, physical attractiveness,
mental abilities and skills), but societies differ in recognizing these inequalities,
rather inequalities are socially patterned.

Patterns of Social differentiation:

- Egalitarian society: a society in which no individual or group has more privileged
access to resources than any other (bands or tribes);
- Rank society: a society characterized by institutionalized differences in prestige but
no important restrictions on access to basic resources (chiefdoms);
- Stratified society: a society characterized by form, permanent social and economic
inequality in which some people are denied access to basic resources. Wealth,
prestige and office are inherited (states).

Power: the ability to compel other individuals to do things that they would not choose to do
of their own accord. Power ultimately derives from the control of resources that people need
or desire (i.e. professors that hold a degree of power in classrooms: grades).
Authority: the ability to cause others to act based on characteristics such as honor, status,
knowledge, ability, respect, or the holding of formal public office.
Political ideology: the shared beliefs and values that legitimize the distribution and use of
power in a particular society. People conform to this ideology for complex reasons: belief in
value, possible benefits, fear of consequences or there not being an alternative.
→ Both coercion and consensus contribute to maintaining order in almost all
societies.
Hegemony: the dominance of a political elite based on a close identification between their
own goals and those of the larger society. Or in other words: the dominant influence or
authority over others / the social, cultural, ideological, or economic influence exerted by a
dominant group.

Leadership: the ability to direct an enterprise or action. This may be a function of political
office, but also in more informal means in movements/kinship networks. This may be based
on an individual’s position (can also depend on one’s talents/supernatural intervention).
● In (small-scale) societies positions of formal political power are often held by men,
but there are exceptions (particularly in Africa). Women also have informal sources of
power (i.e. ceremonies or marketing).
→ political processes are never static.
● Power and authority may stabilize a social order, avoid/resolve conflicts and promote
general welfare, but it may also be used to contest political ideologies and to
change/destroy existing political systems.
→ conflict and violence do not necessarily destroy the social order.

Rebellion: the attempt of a group within society to force a redistribution of resources and
power.
Revolution: an attempt to overthrow an existing form of political organization and put
another type of political structure in its place (i.e. Arab Spring in 2011).

15
Enculturation: the process in which cultural characteristics and norms are transferred by a
society towards an individual (teaching and enforcing of the norms and values). It is one of
the critical ways that behaviour is regulated to minimize conflict.
● Every society has some social mechanisms to deal with non normative behaviour
and conflict (i.e. gossip, ridicule, witchcraft accusation, avoidance).
Law: a means of social control and dispute management through the systematic application
of force by a politically constituted authority (coming from consensus/powerful authority?).

Four types of political organization:

1) Band Society: a small group of people related by blood or marriage (nuclear family),
who live together and are loosely associated with a territory in which they forage,
often egalitarian. They have minimal role specialization, are fairly independent of one
another, are exogamous, have flexible membership and have few differences of
wealth, prestige or power. They often have informal leaders, whose experience,
knowledge or skill are a source of prestige (still need consensus).
→ social order is maintained informally by gossip, ridicule and avoidance.
→ they lack the strong formal leadership that warfare requires, they fight
internally.

2) Tribal Society: a culturally distinct population whose members consider themselves

descended from the same ancestor (often pastoralists or horticulturists). They use
reciprocity and redistribution, are egalitarian, do not have distinct or centralized
political institutions or roles (do have leaders). Power and social control are
embedded in unilineal (!) kinship, religion, or other cultural institutions. They have a
high degree of warfare (because ecology, to balance population and resources,
social structure or the result of outside influence).
● Bigman: a self made leader who gains power through personal achievements
rather than through political office.

3) Chiefdoms: a ranked society with social ranking in which political integration is

achieved through an office of centralized leadership called the chief (often among
cultivators and pastoralists). They are organized through kinships and have
centralized leadership (which is inherited). Chiefdoms vary in the equity with which
goods and wealth are distributed.
→ Internal violence is lower due to the chief’s authority.
→ Social order is maintained through both fear and consensus

4) States: a hierarchical, centralized (and most complex) form of political organization in

which a central government has a legal monopoly over the use of force. Different
groups are incorporated into society and kinship are not of big importance. The state
can incorporate linguistic, ethnic, religious and social groups without splitting. States
are beneficial to its members. States create three social levels. Often experience
unstableness and rebellion trying to overthrow the government,
● Government: an interrelated set of status roles that becomes separate from
other aspects of social organization in exercising control over a population.
● Sumptuary laws: laws limiting the consumption of certain goods to particular
classes of people.
Ethnicity: perceived differences in culture, national origin, and historical experience by
which groups of people are distinguished from others in the same social environment (social
construction).

16
Nation-States: a government or territory identified with a culturally homogenous population
and national history. It remains power by drawing cultural boundaries, by promoting
nationalism, by creating laws to suppress minority cultures and by highlighting the national
identity: ‘’imagined community’’. States use education, law and the media to create a
national culture and identity that becomes the only authorized representation of society.
→ globalization poses strong challenges, more integration is happening among
rather than within nations.

17
 [appendix] A Brief Historical Guide to Anthropological Theory
Look at table 3.1, chapter 3, p.54

19th century Evolutionism:

● Loosely based on evolutionary models drawn from biology;
● Humans pass cultural traits acquired during their lifetimes to their offspring;
● History of humanity = progress (at different speeds) towards increasingly complex
forms of society = social evolutionism;
● Savagery → barbarism → civilization;
● Freud: civilized children were the emotional equals of adult ‘savages’.
Important figures: Lamarck, Spencer, Tylor, Morgan (Marx, Engels).

The Early Sociologists:

● Durkheim: Each group of people shared a collective conscience that included a
shared system of understandings, beliefs, and values that molded and constrained
individual behaviour = similar to culture.
● Task: to discover the contents of the collective conscience and the laws by which its
elements functioned.
Important figures: Durkheim, Mauss, Hertz, Max Weber (focused more on conflict).

American Historical Particularism:

● All human beings were biological equals and the differences among human societies
were the result of culture alone.
● The form each culture took depended on its own history, rather than any pattern of
development;
● ! The claim of particular historical development for each culture had important
implications:
1. Cultures could be evaluated on their own terms rather than the universal yardstick;
2. general laws of growth were difficult to find.
Important figures: Franz Boas (opposed to Social Evolutionism, human societies function like
nature), Ruth Benedict.

Functionalism:
● Concerned with the operations of each part of society and the relations among these
parts;
● Culture functions like organism: all the different parts are interdependent;
● History is not important: focus on functioning of the current system.
→ structural functionalism: the functions of the parts remain the whole
→ psychological functionalism: focused on human physical and psychological needs, cultural
institutions in the ways the functioned to meet these universal needs.
Important figures: Radcliff-Brown, Malinowski (psychological functionalism)

Culture and Personality:

● Analyzing culture as ‘personality writ large’;
● Each culture had a unique configuration that shaped the personality of its members,
molding them to fit the culture’s dominant type;
● Child-rearing practices are critical in understanding cultural institutions.
Important figures: Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, Kardiner, DuBois

Cultural Ecology and Neo-Evolutionism:

18
 ● Reevaluated the insights of the evolutionists and attempted to raise their scientific
standards;
● They searched for general laws of cultural development;
● The relationship between culture and environment;
● White’s law: cultures evolve as the amount of energy they capture increases, the
revolutionary changes in technology were critical in increasing the ability to capture
energy;
● General principles of culture could be derived from cross-cultural analysis (Murdock).
Important figures: Julian Steward, Leslie White, Murdock.

Neomaterialism: Evolutionary, Functionalist, Ecological and Marxist:

● Combination earlier anthropological work;
● Developed the band-tribe-chiefdom-state model;
● Neo-marxism: concerned with issues of political economy (colonialism, international
relations and globalization);
● See issues of conflict, domination of one group and appropriation of wealth as central
to understanding culture.
Important figures: Fried, Sahlins, Meillassoux, Godelier.

Structuralism:
● Largely based on work of Lévi-Strauss;
● Tried to cover the basic units of culture and the rules by which they operated;
● Same basic units and rules of culture found expression in all societies;
● The most fundamental rule of culture is the tendency of human thinking to make
binary distinctions, but adds third category;
● Analyzing cultures to show fundamental oppositions as well as the elements that
transcend them.
Important figures: Lévi-Strauss, Althusser, Barths.

Ethnoscience and Cognitive Anthropology:

● Claimed that existing anthropological reporting was unreliable because anthropology
lacked consistent methodology;
● They asserted that culture was a shared mental model through which people
organized their world, with language as the key mean through which this organization
was accomplished;
● A fieldwork method designed to discover the linguistic models that members of
cultures used to classify their worlds, each culture had a unique mental model;
Schema theory = describes knowledge in terms of generalized representations of
experiences that are stored in memory.
Connectivism = knowledge is structured in ‘’processing-units’’.
Important figures: Goodenough, Conklin, Tyler, Spradley.

Sociobiology, Evolutionary Psychology, and Behavioural Ecology:

● Applying the Darwinian idea of natural selection directly to human cultural behaviour;
● Culture reflected an underlying genetic patterning;
● Cultural behaviour as a mechanism through which individuals tried to increase their
chances of reproduction;
● Understanding the connections between biology and culture should be the focus in
anthropology.
Important figures: Trivers, Wilson, Tiger, Fox.

19
Anthropology and Gender:
● Anthropology had been overwhelmingly concerned with men’s activities;
● Often invisible in ethnographic writing;
● Took many different theoretical positions, but shared interest in women’s position in
society;
● Trying to explain female subordination;
● Understanding society involves elucidating gender relationships and showing the
effect these have on other aspects of culture.
Important figures: Rosaldo, Lamphere, Ortner, Leap, Erzen.

Symbolic and Interpretive Anthropology:

● Concerned with the ways in which people formulate their reality;
● People use symbols to help them understand their own culture;
● Shared symbols helped hold societies together;
● Anthropology is an art of cultural interpretation.
Important figures: Geertz, Douglas, Turner.

Postmodernism:
● Hold that all accounts of culture are partial and conditioned by the observer’s
personal history and experiences;
● Many interpretations of history or culture are valid;
● Objectivity is impossible.
Important figures: Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard.

Anthropology and Globalization:

● Focus on culture contact and change;
● Ways in which individuals and societies navigate and negotiate identity, economy,
and politics within the context of global connectedness and inequality;
● The cultural world is a series of overlapping understandings of reality.
Important figures: Appadurai, Gupta, Friedman.

20