February 7, 2012

* Anthropology- the study of humanity * Anthropology is holistic: humanity, broad-based, all people and things in their entirety anywhere in the world past or present. Also holistic referring to ALL aspects of culture: economics, politics, religion, gender, family life, art, etc etc. so, all people and all characteristics. * Anthropology regarding groups: the patterns of behavior and beliefs that are associated with groups of people. The size can vary from 2 to 3 people in a group to a group of billions- no specification as to the size. Also, look at the degree of variation between each group member. * first reading = case study of Tonga. * Anthropology is comparative: studying different topics of a single group and making comparisons between them. Another way is to take one characteristic of a specific group and compare the same topic but from a different group and see differences. * Anthropology regarding change: to study change, you need to have information on particular groups from earlier and compare it to later. And if there is something different later, then changes occurred. (so change is just another kind of comparison) * Anthropology’s sub-disciplines: * 1st sub-discipline: cultural anthropology- people of the contemporary world. It deals with the present. Change is looked at over a shorter time such as decades. * 2nd: archaeology- studying the past using the material remains left behind. Change is looked at over a very long period of time such as a millennium. * 3rd: physical or biological- physical characteristics of groups and how they got to be that way. (study human evolution) * 4th: linguistics- language and communication within particular groups * 5th: applied anthropology- practical anthropology. It takes the theories, methods, and finding of any other sub-disciplines and uses that information to try to solve problems in the contemporary world (do-good anthropology). How to introduce changes into culture that won’t make things worse, etc. * key terms: anthropology, cultural anthropology, archaeology, physical anthropology, linguistics, applied anthropology, holistic, comparative, culture, fieldwork, change

February 9, 2012

* What are the characteristics of TIV culture? * How does she go about doing her fieldwork? * What evidence is there in the book that the TIV culture is in the process of changing? * culture- way of life associated with a specific group of people (includes beliefs, patterns of behavior, etc) (the specific definition) * Culture- learned and shared beliefs and behaviors that make up the major instrument of human adaptation (the general definition) * Culture characteristic: learned, shared, norms, adaptive, pervasive, integrated, symbolic * Adaptive- primary way we adapt to our environment is culturally * Learned- we are not born knowing the patterns of behaviors associated with your culture, although biology gives us the capacity to learn * Shared- interested in groups & norms & also what is the range of variation and limits for when behaviors cross from acceptable to unacceptable for a culture * Pervasive- affects everything about you, even basic biological functions * Symbolic- has things to stand for other things * Integrated- different dimensions of culture fit together and are interrelated so if you change one then others are also going to change * *Difference between integrated and holistic: the fundamental difference is that holistic is an approach of looking at things and integrated is a characteristic associated to culture. Anthropology is associated with holistic but integrated is associated with culture. * Culture theories: focus on technology and economics (ex. Cultural materialism, cultural ecology, cultural evolution. Focus on ideas (ex. Structuralism, symbolic anthropology, structural anthropology) * Ethnography- a report on