Unit 2

Early Beginnings of AnthropologyDevelopment of SociologyPioneers in the two disciplinesDevelopment of the two disciplines

in the Philippines

The founding of anthropology may be traced back to the 15th century. It is in the age of exploration and colonization that the need to examine the lifestyles and nature of the “others” was felt.

The others=non-western peoples

In the 18th century the discipline was formally instituted with its founding fathers: Edward Tylor and Henry Morgan.

All cultures evolve from simple to complex= early evolutionary theory

Tylor Morgan

The inability of this EE theory to explain for the variation of culture resulted to the rise of other theories such as that of Bronislaw Malinowski’s Functionalism and consequently Leslie White’s Later Evolutionism.

Malinowski White

most anthropologists have centered their practice on the effect of globalization and the transformations of societies

They were later dubbed as the Post-modernists

Bourdieu and FoucaultTraditional- focus on supernatural

reasonsModern-focus on sciencePm-science /truth is fluid

Bourdieu Foucault

The pioneers of anthropology include: Edward Tylor, Henry Morgan, Herbert Spencer, Elliot Smith, William Perry, W.H. Rivers, Fritz Graebner, Franz Boas, Margaret Mead, Ralph Linton, Abram Kardiner, Bronislaw Malinowski, A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, Julian Steward, Levi-Strauss.

During the American colonial regime (particularly between 1904-45) more exhaustive studies pertaining to the origin and identities of the Filipino people were conducted. The Bureau of Non-Christian Tribes was established in 1901 to further chronicle the culture of the mountain peoples of the country. The more specific tasks of the bureau were to “conduct demographic, linguistic, and ethnographic studies of lives of these tribes to determine the most practicable means for bringing their advancement in civilization and material prosperity.” (Abaya et al).

It was in 1914 that anthropology began as an academe in the country through the establishment of the Department of Anthropology at the University of the Philippines with Henry Otley Beyer as head.

Sociology as a scientific discipline emerged in the early 19th century as an academic response to the challenge of modernity: as the world is becoming smaller and more integrated, people's experience of the world is increasingly atomized and dispersed.

Sociologists hoped not only to understand what held social groups together, but also to develop an "antidote" to social disintegration and exploitation.

Auguste Comte The term “sociology” was coined by

Auguste Comte in 1838 from Latin socius (companion, associate) and Greek logia (study of, speech). Comte hoped to unify all studies of humankind--including history, psychology and economics. His own sociological scheme was typical of the 19th century; he believed all human life had passed through the same distinct historical stages and that, if one could grasp this progress, one could prescribe the remedies for social ills.

Comte Weber Durkheim

The first European department of sociology was founded in 1895 at the University of Bordeaux by Émile Durkheim, founder of L'Année Sociologique (1896).

In 1919 a sociology department was established in Germany at the Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich by Max Weber

in 1920 in Poland by Florian Znaniecki. The first sociology departments in the

United Kingdom were founded after the Second World War.

Early theorists' approach to sociology, led by Comte, was to treat it in much the same manner as natural science, applying the same methods and methodology used in the natural sciences to study social phenomena. The emphasis on empiricism and the scientific method sought to provide an incontestable foundation for any sociological claims or findings, and to distinguish sociology from less empirical fields such as philosophy.

Positivism

One push away from positivism was philosophical and political, such as in the dialectical materialism based on Marx's theories.

In the late 20th century, some sociologists embraced postmodern and poststructural philosophy. Others began to debate the nature of globalization. These developments have led to the reconceptualization of basic sociological categories and theories.

inspired by the thought of Michel Foucault, power may be studied as dispersed throughout society in a wide variety disciplinary cultural practices. In political sociology, the power of the nation state may be seen as transforming due to the globalization of trade (and cultural exchanges) and the expanding influence of international organizations

The pioneers of sociology include: John Graunt, William Petty, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Giambattista Vico, Benedict (or Baruch)Spinoza, George Berkeley, Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant, Edmund Burke, Comte Joseph Marie de Maistre, Charles de Montesquieu, Thomas Malthus, Georg Frederick Hegel, Marie-Jean, Marquis de Condorcet, Mary Wollstonecraft, Auguste ComteAlexis de Tocqueville, Karl Marx, John Stuart Mill, Arnold Toynbee, Max Weber.

Sociology in the philippines have been instituted through the sponsorship of the American government in the country. It was first established in the University of the Philippines. Like anthropology, the discipline was first founded in the country by the colonizers as a mechanism for scientifically studying the populace.

The UP Department of Sociology has been providing quality education, research, and community/extension services through its various programs for almost one hundred years. It was first founded as the Department of Anthropology and Sociology in 1908 and later restructured as the Department of Sociology and Social Welfare in the 1950's. On 9 November 1962, the Department was established as a distinct unit of the University and came to be known as the UP Department of Sociology.

Randy David

The UST has also been offering the course at the College of Arts and Letters.

January 2008, UST hosted the ISA-SOR

Functionalism in social science looks for the part (function) some aspect of culture or social life plays in maintaining a cultural system. It assumes that all cultural traits serve the needs of individuals in a society. The function of a culture trait is its ability to satisfy some basic or derived need of the members of the group. The major objection to this theory is that it cannot readily account for cultural variation. It cannot explain why certain specific cultural patterns arise to fulfill a need that might be fulfilled just as easily by any of a number of alternative possibilities.

Later/ Neoevolutionism’s basic law of cultural evolution is that: “other factors remaining constant, culture evolves as the amount of energy harnessed per capita per year is increased or as the efficiency of the instrumental means of putting energy to work is increased. In other words, a more advanced technology gives human control over more energy and cultures expand and change as a result.

Environment X Technology= Culture> Sahlins+Service: White’s theory resulted to general evolution; Steward’s theory resulted to specific evolution

Society is consisted of two classes: Proletariat and Bourgeiosie. To reach or achieve utopia, the oppressed must revolt against the oppressors in a bloody revolution. Essentially, Marx defines the existing relationships within a society as an interaction between to rival classes. A capitalistic approach to institutional and individual behaviors is being proposed. The failure of many societies that attempted to follow Marx’s proposal on communism projects the inapplicability of the theory.

Promotes the theory of social solidarity which is consisted of two forms namely: organic and mechanical solidarity. Mechanical solidarity is the traditional notion on unity which can only be achieve through the similarity of the members of a group. In a way, this notion of solidarity mirrors Marx’s proposition. Organic solidarity, on the other hand, promotes a type of unity wherein the group’s optimum performance would be through the very difference of the traits of its members. Critiques of Durkheim question the actual plausibility of complete harmony in a highly varied group.

He argued that those in political power were able to shape the way accepted truths were defined. In the modern age, truth is defined through science, and science, in turn, is controlled by Western political and intellectual elites. Science, then, is not only a way of understanding the world, it is a way of controlling and dominating it. Adherents propose that anthropology must transform itself into a purely activist discipline that seeks to express the voices of the dominated rather than to study or interpret them.

Habitus is a socialized subjectivity Bourdieu claims that meaning-construction is a process of far greater complexity than many social scientists (constructivists/interactionists) concede. He has tried to show the relationship between habitus and practical or common sense cognition; and he has elaborated in recent publications on the philosophical underpinnings of habitus. Utilizing habitus might also serve to better ground philosophically claims as to the relevance of social foundations of education for teacher preparation.

Bourdieu’s central contribution to sociological theory is his attempt to find a middle ground between individual agency and structural determinacyCentral to that middle ground is his concept of human habitus. The Latin, habitus, means condition (of the body); character, quality: style of dress, attire, disposition, state of feeling; habit. Bourdieu’s concept of human habitus matches somewhat the original Latin meaning, except perhaps for “character.” For Bourdieu, habitus refers to socially acquired, embodied systems of dispositions and/or predispositions. (Richard Nice, a principal translator, points out that the semantic cluster of “dispositions” is wider in French than in English, equivalent to predisposition, tendency, propensity, or inclination.)

Hence it refers not to character, morality, or socialization per se, but to “deep structural” classificatory and assessment propensities, socially acquired, and manifested in outlooks, opinions, and embodied phenomena such as deportment, posture, ways of walking, sitting, spitting, blowing the nose, and so forth.

Habitus underlies such second nature human characteristics and their infinite possible variations in different historical and cultural settings. While habitus derives from cultural conditioning, Bourdieu does not equate habitus with its manifestations; nor does he think of habitus as a fixed essence operating like a computer program determining mental or behavioral outcomes. Bourdieu rejects crude determinist notions of human action as passive reflexive responses to conditioning stimuli. He also rejects structuralist notions of behavior as execution of imperceptible yet determinate rules of action.

End of unit 2