Introduction to Anthropology

SSF1173 INTRODUCTION
TO ANTHROPOLOGY

Basic Concepts and Fundamentals Concepts in Anthropology

BY

AIN MUNIRA BINTI MOHD YUSUF
(73985)

CONTENTS

1. Learning Unit 1 - What is Anthropology?
2. Learning Unit 2 - Perspectives and Theoretical Foundations
3. Learning Unit 3 - Ethnography and Field Methods
4. Learning Unit 4 - Culture
5. Learning Unit 5 - Marriage, Family and Kinship
6. Learning Unit 6 - Belief Systems and Religions
7. Learning Unit 7 - Economic Activity and Livelihood

CONTENTS

8. Learning Unit 8 - Economic Activity and Livelihood (ii)
9. Learning Unit 9 - Political Systems and Socio-political

Organisation
8. Learning Unit 10 - Race and Ethnicity
9. Learning Unit 11 - Gender and Sexuality
10. Learning Unit 12 - Applied Anthropology
11. Learning Unit 13 - Applied Anthropology (ii)
12. Learning Unit 14 - Anthropology in Malaysia

Learning Unit 1:
What is Anthropology?

DEFINITION

 The study of human existence and civilization in all of its facets.

 investigates how people live, what they think, what they produce,
and how they interact with their surroundings.

KEY CONCEPTS

1. Culture - the methods of life that people in social groupings have
learnt and shared.

- Many animals' lives are governed by simpler, inborn f-
orms of thought and behaviour, but culture is not one of
them.

KEY CONCEPTS

1. Culture - People's ability to generate and transmit complex concepts t
hrough language and other symbolic forms of representation,
such as art, is vital to culture.

2. Evolution - Biological evolution is a natural process that occurs through
out time as new and more sophisticated creatures emerge.

- Some anthropologists investigate how the first people de
scended from ancestral primates, which includes humans,
monkeys, and apes.

3. Society - A herd of bison, for example, is a group of interacting ani
mals.
Human communities, on the other hand, frequently consist of
millions or billions of individuals who share a similar culture.

Fields of Anthropology
1. Archaeology

 focuses on the study of historical
human cultures and culture rather
than current human civilizations
and culture.

 Also focus on artefacts (the rem-
nants of previous human-made
goods such as tools, pottery, and
structures) and human fossils
(preserved bones).

Fields of Anthropology
2. Cultural Anthropology

 encompasses the study of people
and their cultures in contemporary
society.

 Cultural anthropologists look at
things like how individuals make a
living, how they interact with one
another, what values they have,
and how institutions arrange indi-
viduals in society.

 Cultural anthropologists frequently
live among the people they study
for months or years.

Fields of Anthropology  focuses on how people in differ-
3. Linguistic Anthropology ent cultures utilise language.

 Those that perform this type of
anthropology have had exten-
sive linguistics instruction.

 frequently study with individuals
who speak unwritten (or oral)
languages or languages that
are spoken by a small number
of people.

 study may entail devising a
method for writing a previously
unwritten text.

Fields of Anthropology

4. Physical Anthropology

 focuses on the biological and cultural ties between humans. Human evo-
lution is studied by certain physical anthropologists, just as it is by cer-
tain archaeologists.

 Physical anthropologists, on the other hand, are more interested in the
evolution of human morphology and physiology than in cultural change.

 Physical anthropologists work from the belief that humans are primates.
 Some physical anthropologists focus on forensic science, which is the

examination of scientific evidence in court trials.
 In situations of genocide, the crime of mass murder commonly connect-

ed with conflicts, mass graves have also been unearthed. In certain situ-
ations, anthropologists have produced evidence that has been utilised to
condemn guilty parties in war crimes tribunals.

Learning Unit 2:
Perspectives and Theoretical Foundations

1. EVOLUTION

 Unilineal Evolution was the first anthropological theory to be creat-
ed.

 The most important Nineteenth-century social evolutionists were E.
B. Tylor, Lewis Henry Morgan, and Herbert Spencer (a sociologist).

 They gathered information through missionaries and traders, and
they seldom visited the civilizations they were studying.

 They compiled this secondhand facts and applied their general the-
ory to all civilizations.

a) Universal evolutionary stages :
 savagery
 barbarism
 civilization.

b) Two main assumptions embedded in social evolutionism:

Psychic Unity Superiority of Western Cultures

 A concept that suggests human  This was not unusual at the time.

minds share similar characteristics  This idea was founded on the fact
all over the world.
that Western civilizations pos-

 This means that all people and their sessed more technologically so-

societies will go through the same phisticated technology and a notion

process of development. that Christianity was the genuine

religion, and it was strongly estab-

lished in European colonisation.

2. FUNCTIONALISM

Definition:

 Theory based on the idea that all components of a society—institutions, roles,
norms, and so on—serve a purpose and are necessary for the society's long-
term existence.

Example :
 The manner “food was farmed or prepared, where the food was consumed,

the economic or social distribution of products, the regulations that assure the
steady supply of food, and the authority that enforces those norms” is how to

KEY TERMS AND DEFINITION
 Malinowski also introduced the fieldwork approach, which is the retrieval of

data from the study's social and cultural setting by first-hand observation.

KEY TERMS AND DEFINITION

 Ethnography - The description of a culture or community is a subset of
Malinowski's concept of fieldwork.

 Malinowski also emphasised the interconnectedness of traditions, emphasising that
fieldwork or ethnography would allow one to investigate the entire culture.

 Example - Malinowski accepted the Trobriand Islanders' magic rites, which
they then utilised when fishing, prompting him to investigate the
community's complete social and economic components.

 Malinowski theorised the kula ring, which was a type of economic transaction amongst
the Trobriand Islanders, after additional research. Necklaces were traded clockwise
while armshells were exchanged counter-clockwise in this transaction.

 Rather than diachronic, or over time, functionalism investigates civilizations at a single
point in time, which is known as synchronic.

 Malinowski viewed society as an organism, a word he took from Durkheim's organic
solidarity, which is a system that works as a whole, with each component acting inde-
pendently and serving a specific purpose.

METHOD OF FUNCTIONALISM

 MAIN: Fieldwork
- Due to his detailed description of how to do participant observation and
ethnography in Argonauts of the Western Pacific, Malinowski is known
as the "Father of Fieldwork."

 Malinowski's systematic approach to field work seeks to bring the method of hard
science to ethnography.

 In Argonauts, he states the "principles of [his] method can be grouped under
three main headings:
i. an anthropologist performing fieldwork must have scientific objectives and
values.
ii. the best and, in some cases, the only way to understand another culture ade-
quately is to live in it.
iii.a researcher must "use a variety of unique ways for gathering, altering, and
repairing his evidence."





KEY FIGURES

Bronislaw Malinowski Alfred Radcliffe-Brown

Malinowski's theory focuses The structural functionalism hy-
on how culture meets the pothesis of Radcliffe-Brown fo-
needs of individuals cuses on how culture meets the
necessities of society.

3. STRUCTURALISM

HISTORY CONTEXT

 Emile Durkheim - The idea that hu-
man thought comes before observation
and that social and cultural processes
are the result of universal human cogni-
tion was born.

 Claude Levi-Strauss
 3 fundamental properties of the human

mind:
i. People obey norms
ii. Reciprocity is the simplest way to
form social bonds
iii. A gift connects both the donor and
the recipient in a long-term social
bond.

METHOD OF STRUCTURALISM

 Structuralism - The impact of univer-
sal patterns in human mind on cultural
phenomena.

 Psychic Unity - Despite variances in
ethnicity and culture, the human spe-
cies shares the same core psychologi-
cal makeup.

 Binary Oppositions -enables specific
patterns of thinking to be coordinated.
For example, "life versus. death,"
"culture vs. nature," and "self vs. other"
are examples of binary systems ex-
plored.

 Unity of Opposites - Each thought has
an opposing concept upon which it is
dependant.

STRUCTURALISM IN KINSHIP  Structure of Kinship - The systems are
founded on logical oppositions of con-
Claude- Levi-Strauss's model of trastive categories, which are deeply
"totemic operator” embedded patterns of human cognition.
For instance, the link between close
family members and marriage in various
cultures might represent a contrasting
type of kinship.

 According to research, there is an incest
taboo in practically all societies, which
prohibits a direct family member from
marrying another direct family member.

 There are no societies that allow direct
incest, despite the fact that every culture
has its own goals and ideas on the sub-
ject of marriage, some of which include
matrilateral cross-cousin marriages or
patrilateral cross-cousin weddings.

Learning Unit 3:
Ethnography and Field Methods

ETHICS

Definition:
 In terms of what one should not do and what one should do as a professional in

the subject, it reflects broad moral concepts of what is terrible and what is good.
 The AAA is dedicated to ensuring that all anthropologists have access to high-

quality information on methodological and ethical best practices. The following
are the Association's Professional Responsibility Principles:

i. Do No Harm
ii. Be Open and Honest Regarding Your Work
iii. Obtain Informed Consent and Necessary Permissions
iv. Weigh Competing Ethical Obligations Due Collaborators and Affected Parties
v. Make Your Results Accessible

ETHNOGRAPHY 1. Critical Ethnography

 In order to generate social change, a
qualitative research technique that ex-
pressly sets out to criticise hegemony, op-
pression, and uneven power relations.

2. Feminist Ethnography

 a research technique, or a hypothesis on
how to do research. Its primary strategy
is long-term observational study driven by
a desire to help women.

3. Visual Ethnography

 captures and expresses people's per-
spectives and social realities using pho-
tography, motion pictures, hypermedia,
the web, interactive CDs, CD—ROMs,
and virtual reality.

4. Virtual Ethnography

 a kind of investigation of the social inter-
actions that occur in virtual settings

MALINOWSKI

 The most renowned anthropologist of the twentieth centu-
ry in the areas of ethnography and fieldwork.

 He is regarded as one of the founding authors of current
social anthropology and is credited with reinventing the
fieldwork method.

 ‘A typical piece of intense work is one in which the worker
lives among a group for a year or more and examines
every detail of their life and culture; in which he gets to
know every member of the group personally,' says Mali-
nowski. His "Theory of Needs" was one of Malinowski's
most notable contributions to anthropology.

 Theory of Needs:
 where he claims that "culture exists to suit an individ-
ual's universal biological, psychological, and social re-
quirements"

PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION

Definition:
 a method of research in anthropology

and sociology defined by an investi-
gator's attempt to obtain entry into
and social acceptance by a foreign
culture or alien group in order to get a
better grasp of the society's internal
structure.

Example:
 An anthropologist may live with a tribe

in the Amazon rainforest, whereas a
sociologist may study poverty in a
housing project.

CULTURE Learning Unit 4:
Culture

Definition:

 the acquired and shared behaviour and ideas of a certain
social, ethnic, or age group It is also the complicated total
of collective human beliefs with an organised stage of civ-
ilisation that might be peculiar to a country or historical
period.

 Two persistent and basic themes:
i. Diversity - Individuals differ from different civilizations
due to their upbringing and environment (or culture).
ii. Change - Culture evolves for one of two reasons: se-
lective transmission or changing requirements. When a
town or culture is confronted with new obstacles, such as
the loss of a food supply, they must adapt their way of life.

ETHNOCENTRISM Definition:

 The belief that one's own way of life is
natural or correct, as defined by an-
thropologists.

 Some would simply refer to it as cultur-
al illiteracy.

 that one may see one's own culture as
the proper way of life.

Example:

 Asian cultures are found in all of Asia's
countries. Chopsticks are used with every
meal throughout Asia.

SOCIAL CONTROL Definition:
 At every level of our existence, from
the family to the local community, the
nation, and our global civilization, it is a
part of our life.
 Social control is defined by anthropolo-
gists as "any mechanism used to pre-
serve behavioural standards and regu-
late conflict."

Example:
 The education system
 Policing and the law
 Psychiatry
 Social work
 The welfare state

SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS

Definition:
 a group of social positions, connected
by social relations, performing a social
role.

Example:
 education, governments, family, eco-
nomic systems, religions, and any peo-
ple or groups that you have social in-
teraction with.

Learning Unit 5:
Marriage, Family and Kinship

KINSHIP Definition:
 the word used to describe culturally recognized

ties between members of a family.
 Kinship includes the terms, or social statuses,

used to define family members and the roles or
expected behaviors family associated with
these statuses.

1.Consanguineal - relationships formed through
blood connections.

2.Affinal - relationships created through mar-
riage ties

FAMILY Definition:

 the smallest group of individuals who see
themselves as connected to one another.

1.Conjugal family -Parents and their minor or de-
pendent children who are in a culturally recog-
nised relationship, such as marriage.

2.Non-conjugal family - Due to the death of
one spouse, divorce, or the lack of a marriage, a
single parent with dependent children.

3. Extended family - a family with at least three generations living together in the same
dwelling.

4. Stem family - An elder couple and one of their adult offspring, along with a spouse (or
spouses) and children, form a variation of an extended family.

5. Joint family - a huge extended family consisting of several generations.
6. Polygamous families - based on plural marriages in which numerous wives or, in uncom-

mon circumstances, several husbands are present.

MARRIAGE

Definition:

 a partnership between a man and a wom-
an in which the mother's children are re-
garded as both parties' legitimate progeny.

1.Endogamy - Cultural norms that emphasise
the importance of marrying within a cultural
group.

2.Exogamy - Outside of a specific group, there
are cultural expectations regarding marriage.

3.Polygyny - marriages in which there is just one husband and a number of
women.

4.Polyandry - marriages in which there is only one wife and several husbands.
5.Dowry - Before the wedding, monies are provided to the groom's family.
6.Bridewealth -Before the wedding, monies are provided to the bride's family.

STATUS AND ROLE

Definition:
1. Status - any culturally defined position a person holds in a given situation.
- Many different statuses can exist within a family, such as "father,"
"mother," "maternal grandfather," and "younger brother."

2. Role - the set of behaviours that are required of someone in a certain
- position.

A person with the title of "mother," for example, is responsible for
her children.

Learning Unit 6:

Belief Systems and Religions

COSMOPOLOGY Definition:

 a set of knowledge, beliefs, interpretations, and
practises of a society or culture related to explana-
tions about the origins and evolution of the universe.

 a set of knowledge, beliefs, interpretations, and
practises of a society or culture related to explana-
tions about the origins and evolution of the universe.

i. A cosmology is a set of explanations for a society's
history, present, and future that are part of its
knowledge of cosmo-eco-ethnogenesis

ii. it deals with the origins as well as the finality and
destiny of people and other forms of existence.

SUPERNATURAL

Definition:

 a place outside of immediate human perception.

 It is not necessary for this belief to contain a God or
gods.

Example:

 Sir James Frazer endeavoured to compile the first
comprehensive study of the world's major magical
and religious belief systems in his early anthropolog-
ical investigations.

 Frazer was among the first group of anthropologists
who relied on reading and questionnaires sent to
missionaries and colonial officials rather than travel
and participant observation for their research.

 As a result, he only had rudimentary knowledge of
the ideologies he wrote about and was eager to ap-
ply his own viewpoints.

RULES GOVERNING BEHAVIOR

Definition:
 Behavior that has been generated through exposure to rules .

Examples:
 These principles outline correct behaviour for individuals and society as a

whole, with the goal of aligning individual acts with spiritual beliefs.
 When rules identify implausible or minor possibilities with simply a cumulative

value, they are difficult to understand.
 Even if the results are delayed, rules are straightforward to obey provided they

identify plausible and substantial reinforcers or unpleasant situations.
 Materialistic norms are becoming increasingly difficult to obey since they de-

scribe implausible or minor consequences.

RITUALS

Definition:

 Religious rites or rites that are frequently supervised
by religious experts.

 Rituals may be supernatural in nature, such as
those performed to appease the gods, but they also
address the needs of individuals or the society as a
whole.

Examples:
 Funeral rituals - may be devised to assure a de-

parted person's passage to the afterlife while also
providing emotional solace to those who are mourn-
ing and allowing the community to show its love and
support.

Learning Unit 7 & 8:
Economic Activity and livelihood

CONSUMPTION Definition:
 Consumption - the act of purchasing, consuming, or

making use of a resource, food, commodity, or service.

Examples:
 Consumption allows us to develop and preserve differ-

ences between individuals and occasions.
 Anthropologists recognise that the items we acquire are

useful not just for food and housing, but also for thinking:
by purchasing and holding certain products, people
make cultural categories apparent and durable.

MODES OF EXCHANGE

1. Market Exchange

 Anthropologists understand market exchange to be a
form of trade that today most commonly involves general
purpose money, bargaining, and supply and demand
price mechanisms.

2. Reciprocity

 involves the exchange of goods and services and is root-
ed in a mutual sense of obligation and identity.

 Anthropologists have identified three distinct types of reciprocity :
i. Generalized
ii. Balanced
iii.Negative

3. Redistribution
 occurs when an authority of some type (a temple priest, a chief, or even an institution

such as the Internal Revenue Service) collects economic contributions from all communi-
ty members and then redistributes these back in the form of goods and services.

 requires centralized social organization, even if at a small scale

MODES OF PRODUCTION

 This concept originated with anthropologist Eric Wolf,
who was strongly influenced by the social theorist Karl
Marx.

 Marx argued that human consciousness is not deter-
mined by our cosmologies or beliefs but instead by our
most basic human activity: work.

 Wolf identified three distinct modes of production in hu-
man history: domestic (kin-ordered), tributary, and capi-
talist.

1. Domestic Production
 organizes work on the basis of family relations and does not necessarily involve formal social

domination, or the control of and power over other people.
 power and authority may be exerted over specific groups based on age and gender.

2. Tribury Production
 the primary producer pays tribute in the form of material goods or labor to another individual or

group of individuals who controls production through political, religious, or military force.

3. Capitalist
 The capitalist mode of production has three central features:

i. private property is owned by members of the capitalist class
ii. workers sell their labor power to the capitalists in order to survive
iii. surpluses of wealth are produced, and these surpluses are either kept as profit or rein-

vested in production in order to generate further surplus.

POLITICAL ECONOMY

 This approach recognizes that the economy is central to
everyday life but contextualizes economic relations within
state structures, political processes, social structures, and
cultural values.

 Some political economic anthropologists focus on how soci-
eties and markets have historically evolved while others ask
how individuals deal with the forces that oppress them, fo-
cusing on historical legacies of social domination and mar-
ginalization.

Learning Unit 9:
Political Systems and Socio-political

Organisation

AUTHORITY Definition:

 a fundamental property of man, essential for the
permanent construction of his relationship with fel-
low human beings.

 comes from the ability to carry out a basic act, to
find oneself at a point of origin and when all is
said and done to make history.

 For example, the author of an essay.

LAW

Definition:
 “A social norm is legal if its neglect or infraction is

regularly met, in threat or in fact, by the applica-
tion of physical force by an individual or group
possessing the socially recognized privilege of so
acting”.(Hoebel, 1954)

 Anthropologists have examined how a disciplinary doppelgänger, "legal anthro-
pology," has been used as a type of ideologically infused legal practise by attor-
neys and others. (Goodale, 2017)

POLITICAL ORGANIZATION

Definition:

 the societal patterns in which power is wielded
equal-opportunity society a society in which no
one person or group has preferential access to
my resources over another.

 Anthropologists use a typological system when
discussing political organization.

 Introduced by Elman Service in 1962, the system uses “…types of leadership, societal integration
and cohesion, decision-making mechanisms, and degree of control over people” (Bonvillain 2010:
303) to categorize a group’s political organization.

 Service identified four types of political organizations:
i. Bands
ii. Tribes
iii. Chiefdoms
iv. States

POWER

Definition:
 Power is often defined as the capacity to influence an-

other's decision-making.
 Power, according to Michel Foucault (1983), is a

"collection of acts upon other acts."

i. “Power is deployed and exerted via a net-like organi-
sation,” he adds.

ii. Individuals not only flow between its strands, but they
are always in the position of experiencing and exercis-
ing this power at the same time.

iii.They are always the elements of its articulation, not
just the inert or willing target.

Learning Unit 10:
Race and Ethnicity

RACE 1. Cline
Definition:
 Differences in the qualities seen in popula-
tions from different parts of the world.

 Although a feature may be more prevalent in one
location than another, the variation is gradual and
continuous, with no dramatic interruptions.

 Skin colour is a good example of clinal diversity in
people.

2. Hypodescent
Definition:
 a socially created racial categorization system that automatically categorises a per-
son of mixed racial background as a member of the less (or least) favoured group.
Example:
 birth certificates issued by U.S. hospitals, which, until relatively recently, used a pre-
cise formula to determine the appropriate racial classification for a newborn.
 If one parent was “white” and the other was “non-white,” the child was classified as
the race of the “non-white” parent; if neither parent was “white,” the child was classi-
fied as the race of the father.

3. Noncorcondant
 Because of differences in human physical and genetic characteristics, each would es-

tablish its own set of racial groups.
 Each characteristic is inherited separately, rather than being "bundled" with other fea-

tures and passed down as a package.
 Sickle-cell anaemia is a good example of nonconcordance, since it is generally misun-

derstood as a condition that primarily affects Africans, African Americans, and “black” in-
dividuals.

4. Racial Formation
Definition:
 Omi and Winant - “the process by which social, economic, and political forces deter-
mine the content and importance of racial categories.”
 The concept of "whiteness" in the United States clearly illustrates the racial devel-
opment process.
 The concept of "whiteness" has evolved over time in the United States to include a
variety of immigrant groups that were once the target of racist beliefs and discrimi-
nation.
Example:
 The Anglo-Protestant mainstream society in America was hostile to Irish Catholic
immigration, and anti-Irish politicians and media painted the Irish as ethnically dis-
tinct and inferior.

ETHNICITY

1. Amalgation
 In a multiethnic community, it encourages the hybridization of many cultural groupings.

 Members of various ethnic and cultural groups freely mix, engage, and live with one an-
other, resulting in cultural exchanges and, eventually, inter-ethnic dating and marriages
as social and cultural boundaries between groups erode.

 Geographically, the United States is a big, complicated country with big metropolitan
centres with millions of citizens, moderately populated areas with small towns, and pri-
marily rural regions with only a few hundred or a few thousand persons.

2. Assimilation
 promotes and, in some cases, requires members of ethnic and immigrant minority

groups to renounce their own habits, traditions, languages, and identities as rapidly as
possible in order to embrace those of mainstream society—“When in Rome, do as the
Romans do.”

 For example, during the 1990s, ethnic warfare and genocide in Rwanda and the former
Yugoslavia, as well as recent independence movements by French Canadians in Que-
bec and Scotland, were all examples of negative consequences of groups maintaining a
strong sense of loyalty and identification with their ethnic or linguistic communities.

3. Multiculturalism
 claiming that ethnic and cultural variety benefits a community and fostering tolerance for

cultural differences.

 Multiculturalism is based on the notion that group differences do not cause conflict in
and of themselves, and that society should foster tolerance for diversity rather than pres-
suring members of immigrant, ethnic, and cultural minority groups to abandon their tradi-
tions and identities.

Example:
 New York, whose ethnic districts such as Chinatown and Little Italy border one another,

and Los Angeles, which has numerous different neighbourhoods such as Little Tokyo,
Koreatown, Filipinotown, Little Armenia, and Little Ethiopia, are examples of major cities
in the United States.

4. Symbolic Identity
 restricted or infrequent expressions of ethnic pride and identification that are largely ex-

pressive—for public display—rather than instrumental as a key component of their eve-
ryday social activities.

Learning Unit 11:
Gender and Sexuality

GENDER Definiton:

 the set of gender ideas and expectations that one
learns and performs as a result of cultural and histori-
cal influences.

 In some communities, gender is a "identity" that may
be chosen, yet there is pressure in all civilizations to
comply to gender roles and identities.

GENDER IDEOLOGY

Definition:

 a complicated collection of ideas that ap-
ply to men, females, and other gender
categories concerning gender and gen-
dered talents, proclivities, preferences,
identities, and socially anticipated behav-
iours and interactions.

 Gender ideology varies by culture and is
learned through a process known as en-
culturation. Also known as a gender cul-
tural model.