1. HISTORY OF ANTHROPOLOGY

2. Anthropology as an intellectual discipline is only a hundred years old, but its roots go back much earlier .
3,000 years ago a Greek named Homer wrote a long epic (possibly semi historical) poem called the Odyssey. He describes a voyage taken by his hero Odysseus when he and his crew spy an island they plan to land on. They wonder about the people they are going to find there. They ask questions: “Do those strange folk plant crops in an orderly way or do they
forage for food?” “Do they
revere the gods and have
laws and lawful assemblies?”
“Or are they savages?”
Savages would be people
who didn’t do things the
right way – the Greek way.
Odysseus was asking
anthropological questions.

3. With the invention of the magnetic compass, anthropology became possible as a more meaningful concept in the explorations and colonial expansions that originated in Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Explorers, traders and missionaries bent on their far flung journeys of discovery and conquest, often wrote about and commented on the differences they observed in the ways of life of the people they encountered.

4. BOGEYMEN Accuracy, of course, was another matter ......
There were scary things out there. Because no one had been there – nobody knew …. but stories got back ….
There were
BOGEYMEN

5. Anthropophagi ....
who ate people … and had no heads but could talk perfectly well out of their chests.

6. All manner of weird men apparently lived in unexplored countries around the world ........

7. Elephant men
Goat men
Hairy people

8. History of Ethnocentrism in Anthropology
In the 16th century, Europeans referred to the people they encountered during their exploration as “others” - after all, they were not mentioned in the Bible. Naturally this resulted in a view of “others” that was ethnocentric – that is, with a view that white western culture was “right” and superior in every way. More than that it meant that every culture was understood and interpreted through those eyes.
All cultures around the world display some level of ethnocentrism. In what ways is our culture ethnocentric now? Do you think that ethnocentrism poses more of a problem now than in the past, and if so, why?

9. Europeans wrote many diaries, accounts and letters during the first centuries of colonisation, and although many writers were biased, ethnocentric, or over imaginative (perhaps wanting to make the accounts of their journeys more exciting and dangerous than they really were), they nevertheless left detailed observations of cultures at the time of contact.
Although the accuracy of many of the subjective comments and interpretations can be abandoned, there are detailed descriptions of events and ceremonies which are likely to be more accurate, and provide a unique record of a group before contact with Europeans changed it.

10. Missionaries
Unfortunately one of the by-products of exploration and subsequent colonisation was the desire to “convert” the culture from whatever “savage and heathenish” belief system they had to Christianity. Even if the missionaries were unsuccessful, they inevitably left a mark on the culture they infiltrated – the necessity of wearing “modest” clothing, the position of women, the loss of belief or trust in traditional
religion or medicine etc.
Quickly contact with Europeans
meant a major change in a
culture and a loss of its cultural
purity.

11. As anthropology began as a discipline, with the role of recording and accounting for differences in societies, so the early anthropologists began to develop theories that explained the differences in the human cultures to which they were exposed, and eventually those that began to explain universal trends and processes.
Some of the three earliest were:
Evolutionism
Empiricism
Functionalism

12. Evolutionism
During the eighteenth century, European social philosophers, relying on the writings of other observers, and influenced by the missionary point of view, took a comparative evolutionary perspective, and saw cultural diversity from the point of view of human “progress”.
Scholars focused on finding rational, reasoned and scientific explanations for human differences. They were beginning to understand that peoples adapt, not only to their physical surroundings, but also to social conditions, with the goal of progress and the intention of individual betterment.
So, from an evolutionary point of view, human differences could be accounted for by different rates of progress, resulting in different levels of achievement – demonstrating a progression from the primitive stages of culture to civilisation. [Sociocultural evolution]

13. An Evolutionary Anthropologist
The American Lewis Henry Morgan is a good example of an evolutionary anthropologist. In 1877 he proposed a model
which outlined the stages of cultural development from
the earliest human societies to late nineteenth century culture.
He focused on understanding how cultures are integrated and systematized, and how the various features of one culture indicate an evolutionary status in comparison with other cultures.
He proposed three stages of cultural evolution:
Savagery, in which people subsist on wild plants and animals
Barbarism, in which people start to use agriculture
Civilisation, which begins with the invention of writing
This theory could also be used as a defence for colonialisation as all societies, naturally, aimed to achieve civilisation, as epitomised by Western Europe.

14. Problems of Evolutionary Anthropology
The theory can be discarded on many levels:
Eurocentric
Patronising
Based on poorly understood data
Prejudiced

15. Empiricism
Empiricism is the practice of conducting studies through direct observation and subjective description.
This method of anthropology as a discipline, rather than just a mixture of chance journey and “armchair anthropology” began in the nineteenth century. Fieldwork as direct scientific enquiry helped forge anthropology as an academic discipline.
Those people are primitives!!

16. An Empirical Anthropologist
German American Frank Boas began his career as a geographer, but on a trip to the Arctic in 1883 to investigate the waters, he became interested in the indigenous peoples and their cultures. He spent a year living with the Inuit, and became convinced that only by living with people can one truly understand their cultural differences.
Boas consistently stressed the need for empiricism, the practice of basing studies on direct observation and objective description. He also introduced the concept of cultural relativism, believing that each way of life is a unique adaptation to particular historical conditions. He criticised cultural evolutionism as being too ethnocentric and racist. He believed cultures should be studied in their own terms, not in those of the observer. He also stressed the importance of learning languages and implicitly questioned the Euro-American biases in interpreting other cultures.

17. Boas also stressed that similarities and differences in cultures should be understood as outcomes of the functions and meanings of cultural traits within a society. He pointed out that the same traits can have different meanings in different cultures. Polygamy may occur for different reasons in different societies.
It may signify a man’s comparative wealth, power or prestige
It may be to relieve women of household burdens
It may be to ensure that all women can have husbands in a society where women outnumber men.

18. Functionalism
Functional and empirical anthropology are not very different. A functional anthropologist, however, believes that cultural traits have social functions that contribute to the smooth operation of the whole society.
Task
If you were a functionalist, how would you argue that even negative practices, such as antisocial behaviour, can have a positive function for society as a whole?

19. A Functional Anthropologist
Bronislaw Malinowski is an example of a functional anthropologist. He believed that the social, political and economic structures of society are organised to satisfy human needs and that people’s diverse institutions and practices have specific functions which address those needs.
Malinowski was dedicated to fieldwork, and like Boas, he lived with a different culture. His focus was the Trobriand Islanders of the western Pacific in Melanesia. Like Boas he stressed the importance of learning the language because people express their values and attitudes through their language.

20. Problems of Functionalism
Functional anthropology is sometimes criticized for overemphasizing functional stability rather than acknowledging societal change as an ongoing, continuous process.

21. Tasks
How did anthropology become an academic discipline? What were the principal goals of early anthropologists?
How did Boas and Malinowski influence the development of anthropology?
Why is ethnocentism a bad thing?