Intro to Cultural Anthropology Notes 3/26/10

AscribedAchieved

Some statuses are mutually exclusive (you can only be one or the other.) (i.e. son OR daughter, college graduate OR non-college graduate) Most statuses can change (go from underage – legal (ascribed status), legal resident – citizen (achieved status))

Automatic, a status that you have little or no control over. Examples - adult, female, daughter, Italian-American

Statuses that come through choices, actions, accomplishments Examples - Wash U student, friend, musician

Acquiring some statuses requires conversion experience Examples;-Anthropologist – fieldwork -President (oath of office) -Fraternity brother (initiation)

Age (eldest members of society have higher status than young people in society gender stratification – male gender carries higher status that femalesrace – social stratification associated with race, white race has higher status, more privileges than black race in society

A concept or practice that is the creation of a particular group In other words, a social construct is not a naturally occurring phenomenon, but it is something that arises through social practices, beliefs and behaviors*Race (like gender) is a social construct

Our ideas about race change through time. Our ideas about race vary across cultures. Our ideas about race tend to dehumanize others for political gain – British controlling Ireland, denigrating inhabitants as inferior

Lived 1707-1778 -Made one of the first attempts to classify the human species. -Five sub-species of humans based on temperament, dress, and culture – NOT biology, defining race in non-biological terms

Important method in physical anthropology. Measurement of the human body to understanding human physical variation. Early application (Galton): identity those with criminal proclivities based on body measurements – idea that could identify people with criminal propensities based on human physical variation. Importance of cranial and brain measurements Measure brain – draw ideas about individual’s character/intelligence Bigger brains = higher intelligence

Groups could be formed according to anthropometric measures of cranium. But those groups made no logical sense! brachycephalic = Turks, Hawaiians, Thai dolichocephalics = English, North African, Australian Aborigines. Failed as a way of racial classification though it persisted nonetheless

Trying to determine whether cranial size (and thus intelligence) was primarily influenced by nature (biology) or nurture (how the children were raised, immediate environmental and parental conditions) -Compared children of immigrants’ craniums with parents’ craniums. -Significant changes (hence, cranial shape and brain size are not merely inherited, but are shaped by complex factors). -Major challenge to notion that biological race is a meaningful scientific category. Yet, business as usual . . . Environment mattered, environment shaping outcomes – challenged biological race idea though same work carried on

Last major attempt to divide people by racesTried to categorize people living in certain areas as similar - Caucasoid, Congoid, Capoid, Mongoloid, Australiod races

Reorient focus: Racial classification à eliminated Processes that lead to human variation Denial of race as a valid biological unit. Dividing up people into discrete “types” isn’t natural: these groups do not exist in nature. Recognition that human variation is clinal – human variations don’t have sharp boundaries, more of a continuum than previously thought of.