Anthro 104 notes - Professor: Jerome Camal PDF

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Professor: Jerome Camal...

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Anthro 104 notes: 1/22 Goals Prepare Deppen and process Apply Assess By Discussions (deppen and process) Exams (assess) Textbook (prepare) Book review (apply) Lectures (deepen and process) Top hat (deepen and process) Fieldwork journals (apply) Inquizitive (assess) What is anthropology? ● “The study of humans, past and present” American Anthropological Association ○ Anthropos (humans) ○ Logos (the study of) ● “Anthropology is the study of the full scope of human diversity and the application of that knowledge to help people of different backgrounds better understand one another” Ken Guest Anthropology’s holistic approach ● The four fields ○ Physical or biological ○ archaeology (studying things left behind by past cultures) ○ Linguistics (study of how people use languages) ○ Cultural or social anthro (study of living cultures and their everyday lives) ■ Uses ethnographic fieldwork to better understand a culture Anthropology’s unique approach ● Global in scope ● Believes that humans are connected ● Starts with people and their local communities ● Studies how structures of power impact individuals and how individuals navigate structures of power ● How do you connect to social media? ● How does social media connect you to people across the globe?

Lecture 1/24 What is anthropology? 1. “The study of humans, past and present” American Anthropological Association 2. “Anthropology is the study of the full scope of human diversity and the application of that knowledge to help people of different backgrounds better understand one another” Ken Guest 3. Anthropology is the study of humans, past and present, and the application of that knowledge allows people to better understand different cultures. Learning through culture shock ● Have you experienced this? ● What triggered it? ● Did you experience it when starting school? ● Did it eventually go away? Making the strange familiar: ethnographic fieldwork ● Fieldwork: long-term engagement with a community ● ethnocentrism: the belief that one's own culture is or way of life is normal and natural; using one’s own culture to evaluate and judge the practices and ideals of others ● Cultural relativism: no culture is superior to another and we should do our best to respect other values and norms Body ritual among the nacirema Making the strange familiar and the familiar strange ● Eurocentrism vs cultural relativism ● Michael D. Jackson

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Introduction: Culture and Culturalism Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996) ○ What is Huntington’s thesis (i.e. main argument)? Other examples of culturalism (the use of “culture” to explain social dynamics): ○ ○ ○ ○ Learning Objectives What is the object of anthropology? Discuss: Are our individual actions dictated by our free will, our culture, or by the material environment in which we live? What is culture? ○ “Culture” in the 19th century: Arnold versus Tylor ○ Ken Guest’s definition of culture

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Key concepts: culture, unilineal cultural evolution, enculturation, norms, values, symbols, mental maps of reality What is culture? 19th century debates Who has culture? How are the different cultures of the world ordered? How do they evolve? Top Hat: How did E.B. Tylor understand the difference between cultures? Did he embrace cultural relativism? Unilineal cultural evolution: Anthropologists’ take on culture A. Ken Guest’s definition of culture: Culture: A. How do anthropologists understand culture? Culture is Culture is learned: enculturation ○ Definition: ○ Top Hat question: How do you greet someone? Culture is Culture is symbolic and material: ○ Norms: ■ Definition: ■ Example: shaking hands, smiling ○ Values: ■ definition: ■ example: ○ Symbols: ■ definition: ■ example: ○ Mental maps of reality: ■ definition: ■ example: ○ Top Hat: norms, values, symbols, mental maps of realities

Lecture 2/5 Culture and Structures of Power, Part 2: Structures of Power I.

Introduction and Review A. What is anthropology? ● Anthropology’s unique approach: ○ global in scope ○ ○ ○ believes that all humans are connected A. Example: Making Drums in Guadeloupe i. It is now in the EU so they can’t tan leather on their own since it is bad for the environment II. Structures of Power A. What is Power? i. The ability or potential to affect change through action or influence B. Who has it? i. Everyone but some people have more C. How is it structured? ● What is power? ○ Your definition: ● Top Hat: Who has power in the classroom? ○ Both professor and students ● What is stratification? ○ Your definition: the uneven distribution of resources and privileges ● What structures of power are we going to study this semester? ○ Race and racism ○ Ethnicity and nationalism ○ Gender ○ Sexuality ○ Class ● Top Hat: Which structure of power do you think most shapes contemporary US society? A. What is intersectionality? ● Intersectionality ○ Kimberle Crenshaw created the term ○ Activity: Can you think of examples that would illustrate intersectionality today? ■ Gay african americans ■ Food deserts: lower class neighborhoods without access to good grocery stores ○ Your definition: the interaction of the different structures of power in everyday life ○ Intersectionality textbook definition: an analytical framework for assessing how factors such as race, gender and class interact to shape individual life chances and societal patterns of stratification.

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A. What is hegemony B. How does it work? How is control maintained? ○ Force ○ Hegemony: ■ Definition: the ability of a dominant group to create consent and agreement within a population without the use of threat ■ Example: A. What does it mean to have agency? Agency: ○ Definition: the potential to act independently in a society to produce an effect Why does anthropology matter? A. Political issues of interest B. Anthropology and politics How do anthropologists define politics?

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Learning Objectives A. Learning objectives By the end of this class, you will be able to: ○ Explain the strength of qualitative methods ○ Design an outline of a research project ○ Critically reflect on the ethical implications of ethnographic research ○ Describe steps that can validate qualitative research findings. A. Concepts and keywords Qualitative/quantitative data Object of study Object of observation Participant observation Reflexivity Informed consent Anonymity Research Design: Defining an object of study and an object of observation A. Qualitative and Quantitative Research Quantitative data: what can be measured, counted and compared Qualitative data: descriptive data, the how and why A. Object of Study: What questions can qualitative research answer? Example of research questions: ○ Jacobsen:

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How do Navajo country music musicians negotiate authenticity and belonging in the navajo nation? What does that tell us about “social citizenship,” the extralegal models of defining who had membership in the nation?

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How do your black women living in the U.S engage with, confront, challenge, invert, unsettle and expose the material impact of systemic oppression ■ What does that reveal about the contradictions and failures of twenty-first century US citizenship Activity: Design and write down your own research question. Your question should be on the model of “Why do people....” or “How do people...”: ○ How much responsibility do people feel they have to protect the environment and prevent climate change? A. Object of Observation: Where and with whom to conduct research? Example of research settings: ○ Jacobsen: Navajo country music scene ○ Cox: residents of the Fresh Start Homeless Shelter Activity: Where would you go and who would you work with to answer your question? ○ I would go to cities or villages in several different places so that I can see how people of different ages, backgrounds and class feel about the importance of climate change Doing research: In the field Participant Observation: putting yourself in situations similar to those of the people you are studying Field notes: taking notes of everything you see to make sure your research is thorough ○ Thick description Interviews ○ “Deep hanging out”: finding unsolicited data when spending time with the people that can shape or change your research The ethics of Fieldwork A. Do no harm i. Getting the data but finding the balance between harming the people who trusted you to protect their lives Top Hat: Where should Amanda conduct research? A. Informed consent

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A. Anonymity: i. Respect the people you are observing by keeping their personal information anonymous. A. Other ethical concerns: Validating ○ Triangulation: tracing back to the date of an event ○ Searching for discrepant evidence ○ Testing the hypotheses in the field

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○ Asking informants for feedback ○ Accounting for biases and reflexivity ○ Can you predict what happens Activity: Write down how you will make sure that you conduct your research project ethically Conclusion Top Hat: What are the strengths and shortcomings of ethnographic research? (2-minute essay)

Lecture 2/12 Political Economy: Part I ●

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Today’s questions ○ What is an economy? ■ The wealth and resources of a country and their production and consumption ○ What are some of the ways that people produce and distribute goods? ○ What distinguishes capitalism as an economic system? ○ What is the historical context in which capitalism arose? ○ How does capitalism shape social and environmental relations? What is an economy? ○ Activity: Answer the question “what is an economy?” in your own words. ○ What do anthropologists considering when thinking about the economy? ■ Inseparable from social relations ■ Inseparable from the way power is distributed (politics) ○ Economy (redefined) ■ A set of ideas, activities, social relations, and technologies that make possible the production, distribution and consumption of resources/goods ○ Subsistence strategies: how societies produce food (and other goods) ■ Agriculture, horticulture, pastoralism, industrial agriculture and ONE MORE ○ Exchange: distribution of goods and labor among people ■ Reciprocity: exchange of goods/services between people ■ Redistribution: goods are collected from members of a group and reallocated in a different pattern ■ Market exchange: goods bought and sold using money ○ Activity: When and how have you participated in in reciprocity, redistribution, and market exchanges? ○ Variable dependency on exchange ■ One type of exchange will be predominant ■ Not all societies make people dependent to the same degree on exchange for their subsistence Capitalism ○ Economic system based on market exchange of commodities (generally) through industrialism

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○ Everyone depends on market exchange for their needs Characteristics of capitalism ○ Dependency on market exchange ○ Private property ○ Means of production ■ Land, resources, equipment, facilities, etc. needed to produce goods ■ Capitalism is predicted on the idea of private property ■ A few people own the means of production (bourgeoisie) ■ Most people don’t (proletariat) ○ Surplus value ■ Without the means of production, most people have to sell their labor ■ These workers create surplus value but the owner gets to keep it ■ Example: ● Wages for a laborer: $50 ● Maintenance of means of production: $50 ● Total cost to the capitalist ● ● Price of shirt produced by worker in 1 hr: $50 ● Price of shirts produced by worker in 1 day: $400 ● ● Subtract the costs to the capitalist (400-100) and you have… ○ Surplus value ○ Reinvestment ■ The owner of the means of production reinvests their profit into production of goods ■ Accumulation of new resources; changes in technologies of production (better machines) ■ Technologies ■ Competition: driven by the need to out-compete others making the sae commodity ○ Expansion ■ Increasing sale of commodities in limited ■ Workers can never buy quite as much as can be sold, because their wage is worth less than their output ■ Solution is looking for new markets (coca-cola expanded globally instead of staying in Georiga) ○ Activity: In your own words, how would you describe capitalism? History of capitalism ○ A product of particular historical circumstances ○ Arose in the countryside of England in the 15th and 16th centuries ○ Transformation in property relations ■ English feudalism: ● Land used based on customary rights

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● Lords start renting out land;led to competition to pay rent ● Landless people began working for wages ○ Industrial revolution ■ Shift in 18th and 19th centuries from agriculture and artisanal skill craft to machine-based manufacturing ■ Huge number of wage laborers ■ Heightened demand for resources ○ Colonialism ■ As capitalism developed, the imperatives to reinvest and expand increasingly drove european colonialism ■ Securing access to necessities (raw materials, cheap labor) for capitalism ■ Justifying dispossession of indigenous peoples ○ Slavery ■ Capitalism and slavery were not separate institutions ■ Triangle trade ■ Example: Cotton industry in U.S. ● Cotton and other industries that relied on slave labor were central to making the U.S a player in the global capitalist economy ● Overlooked the devastating human cost of slavery Global capitalism ○ Capitalism has been imposed on many countries ○ Changes in social and environmental relations when capitalism becomes dominant ○ Example: sugar plantations in Cambodia ○ Activity: How does the example of sugar plantations in Cambodia illustrate some of the main features of capitalism? ○ Activity: What are some of the changes in social and environmental relations that capitalism can bring about? Methods: review

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Ethnography and bias Reflexivity Validating ○ Researchers have an inherent bias ○ Can you predict what happens next? ○ Triangulation (getting information from different sources so it can be corroborated) ○ Searching for discrepant evidence ○ Testing hypotheses in the field ○ Asking informants for feedback ○ Accounting for biases and impact of the researcher: ■ Reflexivity: understanding and being aware that researchers have biases ■ Self reflexivity: bringing my own bias into the classroom

I am a white woman from a nice neighborhood in Los Angeles, CA so I have come from privilege and have more opportunities than many people. Political Economy: Unit learning objective ○ Recognize that there are other ways of understanding an economy than through the indexes that we commonly use ○ Critically reflect on characteristics of our modern economic system ○ Evaluate its strengths and weaknesses Review ○ What is an economy: a cultural system of adaptation to an environment ○ The origins of the modern economy ■ 13th-15th century trade routes (china-europe-mediterranean) ■ China was the most powerful at this time so European countries began colonialism ● Triangle trade ● Plantations (owners generated enough capital to create factories) ■ Industrial revolution (18th-19th century) ○ Key terminology ■ Bourgeoisie and proletariat ■ Commodity fetishism ■ Commodity chain ■ Surplus value ■ Exchange value ■ Use value ■ Sign value ○ Capitalism ■ Karl marx ■ Means of production ■ Bourgeoisie (has access to capital and wants to gain more) ■ Proletariat (didn’t have access to capital so they sold their labor) ○ Capitalism and value ■ Surplus value: value created by workers in surplus of their labor cost, which the capitalist appropriation as profits when the product is sold ● Salary: $5 for 10 hours ● Productivity: $5 every 2 hours ● Surplus value generated: (5x5)-5= $20 ■ Exchange value: value of a commodity when it is sold or exchanged ■ Use value ■ Sign value (jean baudrillard) ● Conspicuous consumption ■

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