malinowski scientific theory of culture itirgungor
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Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942)
• Polish-born social anthropologist
• Professional training and career, beginning in 1910, were
based in England.
• Malinowski is often considered one of anthropology's most
skilled ethnographers, especially because of the highly
methodical and well theorized approach to the study of
social systems
• His principal field work was carried out among the Papuo-
Melanesian people of the Trobriand Islands during the World
War I. (Kula ring and advanced the practice of participant
observation)
Minimum Definition of Science for Humanities
Science: Use of previous observation for the prediction of future
The starting point of science is man’s reasonable behaviors and this initates and
develops the culture.
• Basic human activity for survival involves use of knowledge
(fire making, making and use of tools, building shelters)
• Human can not survive –or maintain to be human- without scientific attitude
in other words human need scientific attitude to maintain their lives.
Minimum definition of science for humanities
• Anthropologist’s study consists of field work and analysis of culture which
are carried out conjointly.
• The scientific attitude is as old as culture
• The minimum definition of science is emerged from pragmatic performance
• To be defined as scientific activity, Anthropology should study a reasonable
subject, put general laws which are verifiable by observation. And the
observation must follow the lines of conceptual analysis.
Concepts and methods of Anthropology
• The history of anthropology started with the interest in exotic cultures.
• Anthropological inspiration consists of the observation of savagery and
the comparison of savagery with civilization. (Monstesquieu and Oliver
Goldsmith were the first to compare the surrounding culture with the
exotic civilizations)
• Modern anthropology started with evolutionary point of view. Main
assumptions of evolutionism is valid and indispensible for both field-study
and theory.
Concepts and methods of Anthropology
• Origins of culture: the essential nature of an institution like marriage or
the nation, the family or the state.
• Stages of culture: evolutionary scheme of successive developmental
strata. (technological setting: Stone Age- Bronze Age- Iron Age)
Concepts and methods of Anthropology
• Diffusionism
– Diffusion or transmission of culture from one society to other ones
– Adopting and borrowing by one culture from another various devices,
implements, institutions and beliefs.
– As a cultural process, real and unassailable as evolution
Concepts and methods of Anthropology
• Comparative method: Gathering of cross-cultural documentation
• Psychological (Wundt and Crawley, Westermarch and Lang, Frazer and
Freud have approached the problem by psychological solutions)
• Sociological (W. Robertson Smith was the first to approach all discussions
on the sociological context)
• Historical (linking up phenomena)
Concepts and methods of Anthropology
• Psychoanalytic brought to the Study of Man a specific and important point
of view. (formation of mental)
• Behaviorism: the newer developments of stimulus and response
psychology.
• To guess what the other people think or felt is very difficult for people
from different culture (empathy)
Concepts and methods of Anthropology
• If we take any example of survival:
– The culture of survival nature is due to incomplete analysis of the facts
– Most survivals have gradually and prograssively faded out of antropological
theory
– To retard effective field-work
• F. Graebner defined cultural process as ‘laws of mental life’ and ‘their
scientific and methodical study is only from the psychological point of
view’
What is culture?
“It’s obviously the integral whole consisting of the implements and
consumers’ goods, of the constitutional characters for the various social
groupings, of human ideas and crafts, beliefs and customs”
What is culture?
A vast apparatus partly material, partly human, partly spiritual, by which man
is able to cope with concrete specific problems that face man.
• Starts with the needs of human
• Problems solved by an artificial environment
• Maintained and reproduced permanently (standard of living)
• Transmit to next generation (educational character)
• Establish law and order for cooperation
• Maintain the material substratum in a working order (economical
organization)
What is culture?
Cultural Needs:
Instrumental Imperatives: Economic- Normative- Educational- Political
Integrative Imperatives: Knowledge-Religion-Magic
• Organization: Human beings have to organize to achieve any purpose,
reach any end.
• Institution: It requires an agreement on a set of traditional values to get
human beings together.
• Unless the anthropologist and humanist agree on what is definite isolate
in the concrete cultural reality, there will never be a science of civilization.
• The element of time: all evolutionary process heppen in the form of
institutional change.
• As a theory of basic needs, and a derivation of instrumental and
integrative imperatives, scientific anthropology gives us the functional
analysis, which allows us to define the form, as well as the meaning of a
customary idea or contrivance.
What is culture?
Theory of organized behavior
Essential fact of culture: the organization of human into permanent
• Cooperative activities are organized of:
– the invention of device
– the discovery of principle
– the formulation of idea
– moral or aesthetic movement
• The science of human behaviour begins with organization
Theory of organized behavior
• Rules of the organization (technical, social, traditional)
• Any invention or idea should be translated into organization and accepted
by the society to be a part of culture.
• Every part of an individual’s daily life is related to one of the systems of
organized activities which are the subdivisions of culture.
Theory of organized behavior
• All today’s society institutions are organizations and the Anthropologist
have to state hierarchy, the division of function and status of each
member, and the relation between the members.
• Best description of the culture is the listings and analysis of the
institutions that the culture is organized into.
Keywords
Thank you.
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