Anthros - Greek, "man" or "mankind"
Logos - Greek, "sense", "harmony", "reason", "word"

Holistic study of mankind - cross/multidisciplinary. Study aspires to rigor and reliability of sciences, and depth of humanities, and the integrity of philosophy.

Key concepts: custom, culture, kinship, toolkit, syntax and semantics, discourse, ethnos, -emic/-etic, praxis -participant/observation, action research, synchrony/diachronic,

History/Themes of Anthropological Study

Ancient:

Curiosity about customs, how people behave and misbehave, what is believed and taken to be nonsense, ways of life, purposes and functions of institutions, all have a long history. All groups of people have their Genesis stories In a way it is legitimate to say that the Bible is a set of narratives that provides an explanation, and understanding of a people. As a humanistic inquiry - who are we, what are we doing, where are we going - anthropology has a long ancestry. As an academic specialty and discipline, its history is much shorter.

Herodotus, the father of history, wrote stories of foreign people - their odd relationships and beliefs, there religions, ceremony., marriage practices, how they waged war, resolved disputes, made music. 'Great Men, Important Battles' has  been a type of social study that has been around since Herodotus and the spread of literacy. Explanatory, but usually also with a formative purpose - persuading the reader about not only what happened but also shaping who the reader understand him/herself to be.

Marco Polo, in the thirteenth century, wrote of book of his travels - trading in the far east - explaining the relationships of the tribes, kingdoms, civilizations that he encountered. His was a recipe for others to use in order to trade successfully with people who have different patterns of relationships, values, ways of life.

Ecclesiology - old branch of Christian theological studies that considered the question of perfection of human community - Eden, post-fall, the composition of the chosen community, and structure of the Church after Easter.

Distinct from any ecclesiological study or discipline, what have been called 'The Jesuit Relations' are a series of journals and reports, sent back by Jesuit missionaries during the early European penetration of the Americas. They are descriptive and explanatory writings of the social structures, customs and beliefs (and sometimes grammar/lexicons) of indigenous peoples, with some intended use as guides for the conversion of the heathens.

Evolutionary Era

Working off the explanatory theories of the biologists - Linnaeus, Darwin etc - social thinkers posited an evolutionary framework for thinking about the variety of human societies and ways of living. In general, the theories have various steps from primitive to (usually, not surprisingly, their own) advanced social forms. "How human society evolved." was the driving problematic. Edward Bennett Tylor (Primitive Culture), Henry Lewis Morgan (Ancient Society). Herbert Spencer (1820-1903)- social Darwinism, societies that are 'fittest' continue.

Some progressions:
Savagery - Barbarism - Civilization
Stone Age - Bronze Age- Iron Age -Nuclear
Hunter/Gathering - Agriculture - Industrial

Conflict theorizing - Historical Materialism

Karl Marx - complex societies are comprised of different classes whose interests are distinct, sometimes contradictory. Societies change as these internal contradictions and conflicts are worked out. Social formation and social change are dominated by economic relations and interests. Ideological (ideas, values, beliefs, education, perspective) elements of a society do not contradict and often support dominant economic relations - "The ruling ideas of a society are the ideas of the ruling class."

Functionalism/Structuralism

B. Malinowski among Trobriand Islanders, South Pacific

All customs, practices, tools, beliefs and values are interrelated and comprise the practical makeup of societies. Equilibrium explanations - Malinowski, Radcliffe-Brown developed for other societies the social theories and explanations that were emerging in academic sociology.

EmileDurkheim - defines social fact. Recognizes object of study are patterns that are characteristics of society, not individuals. Society persists through interrelationship of various institutions performing distinct functions.

Max Weber - the engine driving societies is not just material or economic interests, but also significance given to power, prestige, status and wealth. "Verstehen" - people's understanding of their interests and conditions, not some "objective" condition is needed to explain social change as well as stability.

Empiricism

Early 20th Century: Franz Boas - a commit to data, data collection and explanatory theory that was based on the collected information, not grand logical structures and assertions into which data was shoehorned. Boas sent students into field to live with and study vanishing societies of American Indian tribes. Prepared his students for such work by training in archeological techniques, linguistics, social relations, and human biology - what has come to be known as Four-field Anthropology.

Recognized that languages are whole unto themselves, each as complex in its grammar as any other - took this insight and applied it to 'Cultures' - each has its own wholeness and integrity and must be comprehended with an understanding of its wholeness (grammar) in order to understand its customs (speeches). Culture traits, diffusion, culture area studies.

Culture/Personality Theory

On left, Ruth Benedict in American Southwest. On right, Margaret Mead with Samoan woman.

Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict and others in the 1930's became interested in the intersection of individual personality and culture. Took psychological insights/theories that were generated in West, and examined their power to explain non-Western people and cultural forms.

Feminist ascent and critique

Venus of Willendorf (circa 25,000 BC)

In 60's, 70's academic anthropology in US began to recognize some limits to its methodology. Most researchers going into the field were men, and a canon had grown up that was lacking in intimate data developed from women in the societies that had been studied. Women anthropologists were learning things about society/culture that were not just incremental facts, but were beginning to look like other ways of explaining the 'facts'.

Photo of woman (recent)

"[The feminist critique's] basic message--that by using its own standards of science, sociology could be easily and incontrovertibly shown to be riddled with the values and assumptions of sexism which led it either to misrepresent or render invisible the lives and experiences of women and girls--still resounds in the discipline."-Liz Stanley

Post-modern Approaches

Culture as "text" and "narrative". Analysis of custom as 'tropes'. Hermeneutics (philosophical study of interpretations and explanations) , Epistemologies (pholosophical study of the foundations of veracity, the nature of knowledge, "truthiness", the NewsShow) become problematic. Is is possible to bring an understanding of some other culture to the West without making it a story that fits into the established notions we have of what a story is? (Or a dissertation, or a travelogue, or an adventure story, or a properly cited History Of...)

Michel Foucault

Questions about of the location of power within knowledge - Foucault. Culture as strategy - "culture wars" - Bourdieu. Problems of re-presenting, re-presentation. Questions of authorship/authority - within what tradition does this make sense. Limitations imposed by position of knower.

Sociology of Knowledge - how is knowledge, as a limited good in a society, distributed, sold, earned, traded, circulated, hidden, ("Michael Jackson Inc owns the Beatle's music" - what could that possibly mean?)