Four fields: CALC — Cultural, Archaeology, Linguistic, and bioloigcal (physical). American anthropology covers all four.
Cultural · Archaeology · Linguistic · Biological
The four subdisciplines that make up American-style holistic anthropology
Cultural (social) anthropology: living cultures, ethnography, kinship, religion, economics. Archaeology: material remains of past cultures. Linguistic anthropology: language, communication, and culture. Biological (physical) anthropology: human evolution, primatology, skeletal biology. British anthropology splits into social anthropology + archaeology as separate disciplines. Boas established the four-field approach in the US.
Cultural
Ethnography, kinship, religion, economics
Archaeology
Material culture, past societies
Linguistic
Language, communication, meaning
Biological
Evolution, primatology, osteology
Cultural Relativism
Cultural relativism: understand practices within their own context before judging. Boas's core principle.
Cultural Relativism
The methodological heart of cultural anthropology
Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict: cultural practices must be understood within their cultural context, not judged by outside standards. Methodological relativism (how to study) vs moral relativism (whether to judge). Ethnocentrism: judging others by your own cultural standards — the bias anthropology works to overcome. Cultural relativism does not mean all practices are equally ethical.
Ethnographic Method
Ethnography: participant observation — live with the group, learn by doing. Malinowski pioneered it in Trobriand Islands.
Participant Observation
The primary research method of cultural anthropology
Ethnographers immerse in a community for months or years — learn language, participate in daily life, conduct interviews. Malinowski (1922, Argonauts of the Western Pacific): set the standard. Key concepts: key informants, thick description (Geertz — interpret meaning, not just behavior), emic (insider) vs etic (outsider) perspectives. Reflexivity: acknowledge how the researcher affects the data.
How societies organize family relationships — the foundation of social structure
Patrilineal: kin traced through father's line (most common worldwide). Matrilineal: through mother's line (Navajo, Hopi, many W. African societies). Bilateral: through both (most Western societies). Clan: unilineal descent group. Lineage: traceable to known ancestor. Exogamy: marry outside the group (incest taboo). Endogamy: marry within (caste system, royalty). Cross-cousin marriage: common in many societies.
Patrilineal
Through father — property, name pass patrilineally
Three universal stages of every major life transition across all cultures
Separation: individual leaves old status/identity. Liminality (Turner): threshold state — "betwixt and between," ambiguous, neither old nor new. Often dangerous or sacred. Communitas: bonds formed between liminal peers. Incorporation: rejoins society with new recognized identity. Examples: graduation, bar/bat mitzvah, boot camp, wedding, initiation rituals. All share these three stages universally.
Separation
Leaves old status — symbolically "dies"
Liminality
In-between — no status, often sacred/dangerous
Incorporation
Rejoins with new recognized identity
Totems and Taboos
Totem: symbol reinforcing group identity. Taboo: prohibited behavior. Incest taboo is universal across all cultures.
Totems and Taboos
Two universal cultural mechanisms for encoding group identity and rules
Totem: animal, plant, or object symbolizing a clan — reinforces shared identity and prohibitions (clans often cannot eat their totem). Taboo (from Tongan "tapu"): prohibited behavior with social/supernatural consequences. The incest taboo (prohibition on sex/marriage with close kin) is the only universal cultural rule. Freud: psychoanalytic explanation. Lévi-Strauss: incest taboo forces exogamy → social alliances.
Three fundamental ways societies distribute goods and build social bonds
Generalized reciprocity: giving without expectation of return (parents to children, Kula ring). Balanced reciprocity: equal exchange expected. Negative reciprocity: try to get more than you give (market haggling). Redistribution: goods flow to central authority (chief, state) and redistributed (potlatch, taxes). Market exchange: impersonal, price-based. Polanyi: formal economics can't explain non-market economies.
Structural Functionalism
Structural functionalism: every cultural practice serves a social function that maintains the whole system.
Structural Functionalism
The theoretical approach that dominated anthropology from the 1920s–1960s
Radcliffe-Brown: society as organism — every institution maintains social structure. Malinowski: every custom meets a human need. Criticism: too conservative (explains why things stay the same), ignores change, conflict, and history. Lévi-Strauss's structuralism: deeper mental structures underlie all cultural phenomena (myths, kinship rules, cuisine). Post-structuralism: Derrida, Foucault — power, discourse, deconstruction.
Religion and Ritual
Religion: sacred vs profane (Durkheim). Ritual creates community. Shamanism: specialist mediates between worlds.
Anthropology of Religion
How anthropologists study belief, ritual, and the sacred across cultures
Durkheim: religion reinforces social solidarity — sacred/profane distinction marks off special domains. Malinowski: religion addresses anxiety about death and the unknown. Weber: religion can drive social change (Protestant Ethic → capitalism). Tylor's animism: belief in spirits as origin of religion. Shamanism: cross-cultural pattern of spirit communication, healing, trance. Ritual: repeated symbolic action that transforms participants.
Gender and Culture
Sex = biological. Gender = cultural construction. Margaret Mead: gender roles vary dramatically across cultures.
Sex vs Gender
Anthropology established that gender roles are culturally constructed, not biologically fixed
Margaret Mead (Coming of Age in Samoa, 1928; Sex and Temperament, 1935): documented dramatic cross-cultural variation in gender roles — challenged biological determinism. Sex: biological (chromosomes, anatomy). Gender: cultural meanings assigned to sexed bodies. Third genders recognized in many societies (hijra in South Asia, two-spirit in many Indigenous North American cultures, fa'afafine in Samoa). Butler: gender as performance.
Globalization and Culture Change
Globalization: cultural homogenization vs hybridity. "McDonaldization" vs local adaptation and creolization.
Globalization and Cultural Change
How global flows of people, goods, and ideas reshape local cultures
Cultural imperialism thesis: Western (esp. American) culture erases local diversity — McDonaldization (Ritzer), Coca-colonization. Hybridity/creolization: local cultures actively adapt and transform global influences — result is something new, not simple replacement. Appadurai's scapes: ethnoscapes (people), mediascapes (media), technoscapes, financescapes, ideoscapes flow globally but unevenly. Diaspora: communities maintaining culture far from homeland.
Applied Anthropology
Applied anthropology: use anthropological knowledge to solve real-world problems — health, development, policy, business.
Applied and Public Anthropology
Putting anthropological methods to work outside the university
Medical anthropology: culture and health — why patients don't take medications, traditional healing, disease stigma. Development anthropology: why top-down aid projects fail, community-based approaches. Cultural resource management (CRM): largest employer of archaeologists — survey before construction. Corporate anthropology: ethnographic methods for UX research, consumer behavior (Intel, IDEO). Forensic anthropology: skeletal identification for law enforcement and human rights investigations.