The Nature of Anthropology

In his best known tract, "The Republic," Plato (427 BC – ca. 347 BC) described a city whose inhabitants were organized into categories: The Rulers, Auxiliaries, Farmers, etc. The Rulers, he said, would be chosen from the military elite (called Guardians) because they were good at shepherding and caring for the interest of the community. The Auxiliaries would be Guardians in training.

The Rulers, Plato said, must tell the people of the city “The Noble Lie”--that the categories of Rulers, Auxiliaries, Farmers, etc. was not due to circumstances within the people's control, upbringing, or education, but because of God's intervention. God, the Lie went, had put gold, silver, and iron into each person’s soul, and those metals determined a person's station in life .

The Rulers told the people of the city that if their own children were found with bronze or iron in their soul, the child would drop down the ranks accordingly. And if a farmer’s child was born with gold in his soul, he would rise up to the Guardian level. The Rulers also said people had different metals in their blood

stream, and therefore could not intermarry.

The Lie is necessary, Plato argues, in order to keep a stable social structure. In Plato’s mind, The Noble Lie is a religious lie that’s fed to the masses to keep them under control and happy with their situation in life. Plato did not believe most people were smart enough to look after their own and society’s best interest. The few smart people of the world needed to lead the rest of the flock, Plato said. And The Noble Lie had to continue.

Nature/Nurture Controversy

Plato

Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)

Whereas Aristotle's teacher Plato had located ultimate reality in Ideas or eternal forms, knowable only through reflection and reason, Aristotle saw ultimate reality in physical objects, knowable through experience.

Aristotle emphasized experience (nurture) in forging human behavior.

The Nature of Anthropology

Nature/Nurture Controversy

The Nature of Anthropology

An artifact of late 19th Century Western Civilization

The Beginning of Anthropology

Shift in Weltanschauung from idea that human beings are “apart from nature” to the idea that we are “a part of nature.”

Just a little shift in prepositions!

Charles Darwin exemplifies this shift….

Weltanschauung

The Beginning of Anthropology

The EnlightenmentPrecursors John Locke (1632-1704)

George Berkeley (1685-1753)

idealism: nothing, including material objects, exists apart from perception;external objects are ultimately collections of ideas and sensations

Locke's metaphor of the tabula rasa, "white paper” illustrates his idea that, without experience, no characters are written on the "tablets" of the mind; except through the "windows" of sensation and reflection, no light enters the understanding. No ideas are innate; and there is no source of new simple ideas other than those two. (Currently under challenge….Sociobiology, Evolutionary Psychology, Behavioral Genetics)

The Beginning of Anthropology

The EnlightenmentBenjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790)

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)

Discourses on the Sciences and the Arts (1751) A Discourse upon the Origin and Foundation of the Inequality Among Mankind (1755) - known as the Second Discourse

The Social Contract (1762)

Thomas Jefferson (1743 – 1826)

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

“We see only what we know.”

The Beginning of Anthropology

Other disciplines with similar origins:

Sociology - Auguste Comte 1798-1857; Emil Durkheim (1858-1917)

Economics - Adam Smith (1723-1790); David Ricardo (1772-1823);

Karl Marx (1818-1883)

Psychology - Wilhelm Wündt (1832-1920; Wm. James (1842-1910)

Physical

Cultural

PrimatologyAnthropometry

Osteology

EthnologyEthnography

Human Genetics

Social AnthropologyLinguistics

Forensic Anthropology

Archeology

Anthropometry

One of the earliest specialties

Concerned with empirical description of many aspects of the human physical condition…..height; weight; skin pigmentation; skull shape; girth; ratios of measurements, i.e. the Cephalic Index.Never a good source of theory…has been mainly descriptive…important part of modern science of ergonomics.

Google: Anthropometry

Biometrics

Osteology

Study of bone….in anthropology with emphasis on primates

Until recently our knowledge of osteology has been relatively ignored

Now recognized in prevention of osteoporosis and in identification of human remains.

(i.e. Clyde Snow and Forensic Anthropology)

Tibia (shinbone) provides a model to illustrate the process of bone development:

At birth, human skeleton is very small and only partially calcified….the skull and other bones such as the tibia consist of a cartilaginous model, and proceed to harden as calcification proceeds with age.

There are two kinds of bone cells….essentially hard, outer bone cells that overlap one another, and a soft, spongy interior bone whose cells develop along stress lines and provide housing for marrow.

Long bones such as the tibia grow the way a tree grows…that is from the ends. Using data from various bones, it is possible to determine with some degree of confidence such things as the approximate age, sex, population group, represented. Based on skeletal material alone, positive I.D. is rare.

PrimatologyStudy of Primates

Before the 1930’s knowledge of free ranging primates was riddled with “sea stories.”

Early studies included:

Clarence Ray Carpenter’s studies of Howler Monkeys on Barrio Colorado island in the Panama Canal Zone.

Harol\ Bingham’s studies of the Mountain Gorilla.

These were essentially studies in comparative psychology that employed anthropological field techniques….These studies were interrupted by WWII.

Primatology

After the war studies of free ranging primates were resumed with renewed vigor.

Among these were:

Jane Goodall’s studies among the Chimpanzees of the Gombe Stream Preserve in NE Tanzania.

Dian Fossey’s studies of Mountain Gorillas in Ruwanda’s Volcanic National Park.

Human Genetics

“Bokanovsky's Process,’ repeated the Director, and the students underlined the words in their little notebooks. One egg, one embryo, one adult-normality. But a bokanovskified egg will bud, will proliferate, will divide. From eight to ninety-six buds, and every bud will grow into a perfectly formed embryo, and every embryo into a full-sized adult. Making ninety-six human beings grow where only one grew before.”

-----Brave New World

Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World in four months in 1931.

aka Population Genetics (Microevolution)

Human Genetics

Species

Largest set of individuals who can mate with one another with genetically viable offspring as a result.

aka Population Genetics (Microevolution)

Human Genetics

Population (Mendelian population; breeding population)

Set of individuals who mate with one another more often than with others.

Barriers that divide species into populations:

Geographic barriers

Temporal barriers

Psychological barriers

Sociocultural barriers

Human Genetics

The total genetic material of a population is the Gene Pool of that population.

Human Genetics

Evolution is operationally defined as change in the composition of a gene pool.

Processes that effect changes in composition of gene pools:

Genetic Drift/Sewell Wright Effect

(founder’s principle is related)

Natural Selection (i.e. Kettelwell’s pepperback moth study)

Mutation

Cross breeding

Human Genetics

Cultural Anthropology

Ethnography

Ethnology

Social Anthropology

Linguistics

Forensic Anthropology

Archaeology

Psychological Anthropology

EthnographyAn attempt to give an accurate, objective,

valid, reliable account of the way of life of a specific group of people.

(ethnos, a people+graphos, a writing)

This is the basic descriptive level of cultural anthropology.

Participant Observation is major feature.

Margaret Mead’s work with the Samoans is a good example.

Laura Tamakoshi’s (above) work in New Guinea is another.

(Margaret Mead also worked in New Guinea.)

Ethnology (ethnos, people+logos, word)

An attempt to give an accurate, objective, valid, reliable account of the way of life of a larger set of people.

A higher level of generalization….The Science of Culture.

Ethnologists try to find patterns of behavior that are common to the various groups under investigation.

The Comparative Method is an important tool.

Cultural Universals…cultural traits manifest in some way in all cultures under study.

language kinship systems

religion

E.B. Tylor, Franz Boas

Social Anthropology

Area of anthropology most like sociology.

Differs mainly on areas of emphasis and the professional identification of the individual.

Kinship and Descent

Social Anthropology

Sociologists have been concerned mainly with own society.

Social anthropologists have been concerned mainly with traditional society.

Be sure to use the supplemental Powerpoint presentation for more information on social anthropology topics such as kinship and descent, geneaological space, kin types and terms, etc.

LinguisticsStudy of Language

Language is a system of vocal symbols by means of which human beings interact in terms of their culture.

Be sure to use the supplemental Powerpoint presentation “05WHATDO” for more on morphemes, the 3 “S’s” of language, different specialties, etc.

Forensic AnthropologyApplication of anthropology to law.

Clyde Snow, Laura Fulginiti, Gill King, Kathleen Reichs

Archaeology (Archeology)

Set of techniques and methods to study material remains.

Prehistoric (before writing)

Paleoanthropology

Historic (depends on writing)

Garbage Project (U. of Arizona)

Psychological Anthropology

Largely began as “Culture and Personality”Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict

Has morphed into much broader areas:

Martha McClintock’s work on menstrual synchrony

New think tank at UTD called antÉ….. Institute for Research in Anticipatory Systems