Politics of Nature

Politics of NatureWeek 3: Introduction to thinking like an anthropologistIntroduce history of anthropology, discuss concept of culture, and research methods.Discuss instructions for paper 1Define and discuss the concept of social construction (Read Sutton chapter and watch Gergen video prior to Thursday January, 28 class)Apply concept of social construction to how we experience and make sense of nature.

History of AnthropologyChange and Evolution

Great Chain of BeingMedieval belief that earth had been unchanged since creation.Earth a few thousand years oldAll things on a ladder of perfectionEmphasized stasisSubjected to scientific debates in 18th and 19th centuries

2Catastrophism and UniformitarianismExplaining Change

Catastrophism18th c scientists collected fossil forms for which there was no living exemplar.Explanation based on Christian inspired theory of catastrophismChanges were the result of catastrophes like Noah's flood set into motion by God.Changes part of Gods plan.Alternative theory proposed by Charles Lyell3Uniformitarianism

Charles Lyell (1830-1872)Principles of GeologyTheory of earth undergoing slow steady gradual change over long periods of time.Earth millions of years oldChange random and directionlessNew Questions About Biological ChangeIf geological forms have gradually changed from one state to another, do living things partake in this process?Are human beings part of this process? If so how?Are there natural laws that dictate change?The Origin of Species (1859)

Evolution and Natural Selection

Charles Darwin (1809-1882)Analogy taken from animal breedingChanging environment wields pressure on organisms in that environment to change.To survive organisms must be able to reproduce or face extinction.Successful reproduction depended upon variability of inherited traits in the population.Nature selected those traits enabling reproductive success.

Evolution and Fantasies of ProgressAnxieties about the Status of Man

Social EvolutionAlso known as evolutionism and unilineal evolutionism.Recasting natural selection as a story about progress and perfection.Theory that all human ways of life passed through similar sequences or stages of development.

Social Evolutionism

Lewis Henry Morgan (1818-1881)Classifying and categorizing all human beings into hierarchical stages of social development.Based on technological and material development.

Social Darwinism

Herbert Spencer (1820-1903)Coined the phrase survival of the fittest.Idea of favored races. Some social groups more fit to prevail over others.Social Darwinism held that savages were technologically, mentally, and biologically inferior to more evolved races.Racial Logic of Social DarwinismEmergence of Racial ThinkingBy 1900s widespread belief that biology, behavior, mental capacity, and individual ability could be explained by a persons race.White Americans believed to be naturally civilized and superior.Non-whites, naturally uncivilized and inferior.

White SupremacyUsing Natural Inferiority to JustifyInequality & ViolenceLynching in Marion, Ohio (1933)

White race believed to be naturally superior Black and other other racial minorities believed to be naturally inferior.Ideas of racial difference used to justify legalized discrimination and white vigilante violence. Eugenics Artificial Selection

Popular movement focused on selective breeding of the fittest and weeding out of the unfit.Mentally illMentally and physically disabledRacial and ethnic groups deemed unfit.Promoted sterilization and denial of medical care.

Nazi Eugenics PropagandaThis person suffering from hereditary defects costs the community 60,000 Reichsmark during his lifetime. Fellow German, that is your money, too

We do not stand alone

Franz Boas and the Anthropological Critique of Race

Franz Boas (1858-1942)Founder of modern US anthropology.Founding faculty of anthropology department Columbia University in New York City.Foremost critic of evolutionism, social Darwinism, eugenics, race, and racism.Explaining Human Differences: From Biological to Cultural Understanding19th century anthropologyDifferences are the result of biologyDifferences are innate and transmitted through reproduction.Evolutionism Developmentalism and Idea of Progress.Focus on material culture and biology.Focus on collecting and classifying.Focus on ranking and diffusion of traits.

1820th Century AnthropologyDifferences are the result of cultureDifferences are learned and acquired through socialization.Franz Boas and Idea of Historical Particularism.Focus on culture and systems of meaning.Focus on description.Focus on meaning and function

19Culture and biologyHuman biology requires culture for our survival.Human biologyLarge brains and stereoscopic color visionSpeechUpright postureHands free with opposable thumbs

20Biological disadvantages (just to name a few)Big head, small cervix.Weak knees.No hair, no claws, no wings, no fangs, no gills, no hornsDependent young vulnerable to predators.21Biological advantages ofadaptability through cultureImitation.Manipulation and transmission of symbols.Communication of past, present, and future.Planning and coordination.Culture is virtual and creative.Culture is second nature.Culture virtualizes nature, reinvents it

22Culture DefinedCulture is shared, patterned, and socially transmitted in symbolic ways. It regulates behavior and is usually outside of our conscious awareness.

23From cultural objects to cultural meanings..culture is the meaning behind that which human produce. Morals, beliefs, customs, or laws are things; the significance that humans give these things is meaning (Eric Lassiter 2002: 43).24Culture is a System of MeaningCulture is a negotiated system of meaninginformed by knowledge that people learn andput into practice by interpreting experienceand generating behavior.

25Culture and HolismIf what humans say and do only makes sense within a system of meaningActions, things, beliefs only make sense by relating them back to this system of meaning.Holism- relating the parts to the whole.26Understanding Other CulturesThe problem of EthnocentrismOvercoming bias:Natives point of viewCultural relativismConcept of Emic and EticEmic: The terms, concepts, and language that members of a culture use to make sense of their experience, beliefs, and behavior.Etic: The terms, concepts, language that anthropologists/social scientists use to explain the experiences, beliefs, and behavior of a culture.

27Anthropological ResearchAnthropological research methods includeParticipant ObservationFieldworkEthnography