1. CRITIQUE OF FUNCTIONALISM
What is the Functionalist view of Human Nature?
What is the Relationship between the individual and the society?
How do Functionalists account for change?
How do functionalists deal with conflict?
How is the function of a given institution determined?
Must all institutions have a function?

2. FRANZ BOAS
Boas en route to Baffin Island 1883 and Central Inuit; to study of reflectivity of sea-water

3. CENTRAL ESKIMO (IGULIK) STUDY
Inuit can perceive and name hundreds of colors and qualities of sea-water and surfaces unknown in European languages…
distinctions which can be described ‘scientifically’ in physics and optics
and which are of adaptive value to a sea-mammal hunting culture
Boas’ study: earliest anthropological attempt to describe a non-European ‘ethno-science’ in phenomenological terms

4. Analyst seeks to understand phenomena by grasping how they make sense within the framework of the subject’s thought-world i.e relatively

5. 1885: First expedition to Northwest Coast (Bella Coola)
1886: First collecting trip for American Museum of Natural History (New York City) to Nootka and Kwakiutl — massive documentation of Northwest Coast culture

6. Anti-Evolutionist
Evolutionism assumes what it is trying to prove
Order of cultural traits is arbitrary, eg representative and geometric art forms
positioning individual cultures on the savagery-barbarism-civilization ladder discounts their particularity and integrity
sidesteps the important task of reconstructing unwritten histories for non-Western peoples
Rational psychological explanation is misleading i.e. people did not reason themselves out of their primitive state because one of the fundamental characteristics of people is that they act automatically and unconsciously

7. Anti-Diffusionist
Claims for historical contact for enormously large areas unlikely
Improbable that cultural traits remained unchanged for thousands of years
traits are arbitrarily selected only to prove the theory
No attempt to demonstrate whether similar cultural traits are due to independent invention eg. Marriage patterns
Uninterested in how cultures change

8. CULTURAL/HISTORICAL PARTICULARISM
Three pillars explain cultural customs
Cultures can only be understood with reference to their particular historical development. Therefore each culture is unique
Environmental conditions
Individual psychological factors

9. CULTURAL/HISTORICAL PARTICULARISM
idea was not to make a preconceived hypothesis,
but to collect as much data about a particular culture without any theory
general theories of human Behaviour would arise once enough data had been collected
“We refrain from the attempt to solve the fundamental problem of the general development of civilization until we have been able to unravel the processes that are going on under our eyes”
Hallmark of historical particularism became the intensive study of specific cultures through long periods of fieldwork

10. BOASIAN CONCEPT OF CULTURE
superorganic —the product of collective or group life; but the individual has an influence
unconscious — a filter through which reality is perceived, but which is not itself the object of attention
adaptive — culture ultimately helps indivudlas adapt to their environment.

11. Four Field Approach SOCIAL ARCHAEOLOGY AND CULTURAL PHYSICAL
LINGUISTICS
ARCHAEOLOGY
PHYSICAL
ANTHROPOLOGY

12. Influential generation of anthropologists trained under Boas at Columbia University and established Boasian doctrines in North American universities:
Alfred A. Kroeber
Ruth Benedict
Margaret Mead
Rhoda Métraux
Robert Lowie
Edward Sapir
Paul Radin
Alexander A. Goldenweiser
Clark Wissler

13. FRANZ BOAS Cultural/historical particularism
“race, language, and culture” as independent variables
Relativism
superorganic
Cultural Determinism
Data Collection “without” theory
Emphasis on Fieldwork
4-field approach

14. Alfred Louis Kroeber (1876-1960)
1897 enrolled in a course in American Indian languages at Columbia University offered by Franz Boas

15. “ no culture is wholly intelligible without reference to the noncultural or so-called environmental factors with which it in relation and which condition it" (Kroeber, 1939: 205).
“cultures occur in nature as wholes; and these wholes can never be entirely formulated through consideration of their elements.

16. NATIVE NORTH AMERICA: CULTURE AREAS
Cultural and natural areas of Native North America (1939)
ARCTIC
NORTHWEST COAST
SUBARCTIC
PLAINS
PLATEAU
BASIN
EASTERN
WOODLANDS
PRAIRIE
CALIFORNIA
BAJA CALIFORNIA
N-E MEXICO
SOUTHWEST
NATIVE NORTH AMERICA:
CULTURE AREAS
MESOAMERICA

17. The Superorganic
“The superorganic or superspsychic or super-individual that we call civilization appears to have an existence, an order, and a causality as objective and as determinable as those of the subpsychic or inorganic”
individuals have very little if any impact on a culture’s development and change
Culture plays a determining role in individual human behaviour.
Culture has an existence outside of us and compelled us to conform to patterns that could be statistically demonstrated
e.g. changes in fashion show that cyclical patterns of change have occurred beyond the influence or understanding of any given individual. Kroeber showed that hem length, height, and width tended to move up and down in regularcycles,

18. Alfred Kroeber Superorganic Deterministic
Culture Areas
Superorganic
Deterministic
First American Textbook in anthropology (1923)

19. Culture and Personality
seeks to understand the growth and development of personal or social identity as it relates to the surrounding social environment
Ruth Benedict
Margaret Mead

20. 1922 begins teaching at Barnard College as assistant to Franz Boas and meets Margaret Mead
Ruth Fulton Benedict

21. Patterns of Culture 1934
Demonstrated the primacy of culture over biology in understanding the differences between people
Contrasted the ways of life of the Zuni, Natives of Dobu and Kwakiutl

22. Zuni Wealth is a sign of greediness.
Individual fame is a sign of selfishness
Solutions
Share all the wealth with other members of the tribe.
Dare not to do anything that brings them individual fame.
Extremely passive.

23. Dobuan
The Dobuan…is dour, and passionate, consumed with jealousy and suspicion and resentment. Every moment of prosperity he conceives himself as having wrung from a malicious world by a conflict in which he has worsted his opponent. The good man is one which has many such conflicts to his credit…
paranoiac and mean spirited

24. Kwakiutl Overbearing Vigorous Zest for life
Strive for ecstasy in ceremonies
self-aggrandizing
Megalomaniac paranoid

25. Why are they so different?
Can’t be “fixed human nature.”
Why not?
Suppose - Newborn Zuni baby is raised by Dobu parents (or vice versa).
How would this baby behave when he or she becomes adult?
Like their adopted parents.

26. Culture and Personality
A set of core values shapes larger cultural practices resulting in a distinctive pattern of culture
cultural differences were multifaceted expressions of a society’s most basic core values
cultural values relative
Societies have a dominating cultural personality
Culture is “Personality writ large”
The goal of anthropology was to document these different patterns

27. Culture and Personality
“We have seen that any society selects some segment of the arc of possible human behaviour”… and in so far as it achieves integrations its institutions tend to further the expression of its selected segment and inhibit opposite expressions”.
Integrated
Holistic
Deterministic
Individual psychology is plastic, i.e. Is molded principally by cultural experience

28. During World War II, Benedict worked for the Office of War Information, applying anthropological methods to the study of contemporary cultures.
1946 The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture

29. Culture and Personality - Critique
Where’s the history?
How are culture & individual psychology related? For example, does culture somehow 'cause' individual personality?
Is individual behaviour patterned? How? What best accounts for the observed patterns?
Circular -- Basic personality structure was inferred from some aspects of behaviour then used to explain other behaviour
linked anthropology with psychology

30. 1922 Barnard College under Boas, Meets Ruth Benedict.
months Fieldwork in Samoa
Margaret Mead

31. Coming of Age in Samoa 1926
Is adolescence a universally traumatic and stressful time due to biological factors or is the experience of adolescence dependent on one's cultural upbringing?
nature vs nurture

32. based on a detailed study of 68 girls between 8 and 20 in three contiguous villages
Mead described sexual relations as frequent and usually without consequence – or issue
The basic conclusion was
that adolescence in Samoa
was not a stressful period
for girls
Because, in general, Samoan
society lacked stresses

33. “This tale of another way of life is mainly concerned with education with the process by which the baby, arrived cultureless upon the human scene, becomes a full-fledged adult member of his or her society. The strongest light will fall upon the ways in which Samoan education, in its broadest sense, differs from our own. And from this contrast we may be able to turn, made newly and vividly self-conscious and self-critical, to judge anew and perhaps fashion differently the education we give our children (1928: 13)

34. 1983 Margaret Mead and Samoa: The Making and Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth
Mead did not spend enough time in Samoa and lived in naval dispensary with an American family rather than in a Samoan household
was not familiar with the Samoan language
ignored violence in Samoan life,
Failed to consider the influence of biology on behavior
Derek Freeman ( )
Mead had been lied to by two of her female informants and thus came to erroneous conclusions about Samoan culture and the sexual freedom of the girls
She also went to Samoa with preconceived intention of showing that culture, not biology, determined human responses to life’s situations.

35. Growing Up in New Guinea 1930
Mead wanted to study the thought processes of children in preliterate cultures and the way they were shaped by adult society.
developed psychological tests to administer to the children of Pere New Guniea
collected approximately 35,000 pieces of children's artwork.

36. central idea: that differences between peoples are usually cultural differences imparted in childhood
specific child-rearing practices shape personalities that in turn give specific societies their essential natures

37. Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935)
sought to discover extent temperamental differences between the sexes were culturally determined rather than innate biological
Mead found a different pattern of male and female behavior in each of the cultures she studied, all different from gender role expectations in the United States at that time.

38. The gentle mountain-dwelling Arapesh,
Arapesh child-rearing responsibilities evenly divided among men and women
The fierce cannibalistic Mundugumor
a natural hostility exists between all members of the same sex”. Mundugumor fathers and sons, and mothers and daughters were adversaries.
The graceful headhunters of Tchambuli,
While men were preoccupied with art the women had the real power, controlling fishing and manufacturing
Mead's contribution in separating biologically-based sex from socially-constructed gender was groundbreaking, gender roles."

39. 1942 And Keep Your Powder Dry, a book on American national character for War effort
National Character studies
Small scale techniques applied to large scale societies
Culture at a distance
guide government and military policy
early 1960s a vocal commentator on contemporary American life.

40. Characteristics of Mead’s anthropology
Relativism
Ahistorical
Holistic
Participant observation
Romanticism
Humans select their culture, choosing some traits and ignoring others.