Cosmology  Similar to a culture but emphasizes how/what counts as science, religion, politics,economics,  morality, ethics, nature, and the ultimate truth of the world or universe are all connected  especially in terms of the categorical understandings of a culture.    Sapir­Whorf Hypothesis  Talks about the influence of language on thought and perception and categorical thinking.  what is “wrong”, “very wrong”, “bad”    "We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native language. The categories and types that  we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer  in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidoscope flux of impressions which  has to be organized by our minds — and this means largely by the linguistic systems of our  minds. We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely  because we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way— an agreement that holds  throughout our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language […] all  observers are not led by the same physical evidence to the same picture of the universe, unless  their linguistic backgrounds are similar, or can in some way be calibrated.”    Ex. the idea of empty was equated with safe for these people when in fact the empty containers  were more dangerous because they contained more flammable vapors.    Franz Boas  Commitment to empiricism (emphasis on experience and evidence from observation/experiment  as opposed to basing knowledge on tradition or an innate understanding).  ­ Field research and extended residence, learn Language, social relations with Informants  Emphasized the importance of culturally acquired norms as opposed to biological determinism  Rejected a notion of cultural evolution or stages of cultural evolution of the savage, the  barbarian, and the civilized.   Refuted biological conceptions of race   Boas made some innovations to his study:  ◦He learned the local language and talked to people  ◦He stayed a long time and participated in the everyday life of people  ◦He learned their technologies and way of life  ◦He defended Inuit way of life as logical,reasonable and deserving respect    Ethnography ​the study and systematic recording of human cultures and individual customs     Enlightenment philosophy ​defended rationality and idea of civilization against  tradition/religion/superstition  Ex. Azande and witchcraft—make rational   Kula (Malinowski shows how this practice make sense to those who could have thought it was  irrational)  In Enlightenment ideas the concept of civilization was considered to be the highest form of  human achievement. One goal of the Enlightenment was to break down tradition or religious  understandings as the ultimate source of truth.   “civilization can be defined as that which advances man's knowledge and virtue”, try to reason  everything.     Emic​—from the perspective of the subject or th.

1. Cosmology
Similar to a culture but emphasizes how/what counts as science,
religion, politics,economics,
morality, ethics, nature, and the ultimate truth of the world or u
niverse are all connected
especially in terms of the categorical understandings of a cultur
e.
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
Talks about the influence of language on thought and perception
and categorical thinking.
what is “wrong”, “very wrong”, “bad”
"We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native language
. The categories and types that
we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there be
cause they stare every observer
in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidos
cope flux of impressions which
has to be organized by our minds —
and this means largely by the linguistic systems of our
minds. We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe
significances as we do, largely
because we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this wa
y— an agreement that holds
throughout our speech community and is codified in the patterns
of our language […] all
observers are not led by the same physical evidence to the same
picture of the universe, unless
their linguistic backgrounds are similar, or can in some way be
calibrated.”

2. Ex. the idea of empty was equated with safe for these people wh
en in fact the empty containers
were more dangerous because they contained more flammable v
apors.
Franz Boas
Commitment to empiricism (emphasis on experience and eviden
ce from observation/experiment
as opposed to basing knowledge on tradition or an innate unders
tanding).
-
Field research and extended residence, learn Language, social re
lations with Informants
Emphasized the importance of culturally acquired norms as opp
osed to biological determinism
Rejected a notion of cultural evolution or stages of cultural evol
ution of the savage, the
barbarian, and the civilized.
Refuted biological conceptions of race
Boas made some innovations to his study:
◦He learned the local language and talked to people
◦He stayed a long time and participated in the everyday life of p
eople
◦He learned their technologies and way of life
◦He defended Inuit way of life as logical,reasonable and deservi
ng respect
Ethnography
the study and systematic recording of human cultures and indivi
dual customs
Enlightenment philosophy

3. defended rationality and idea of civilization against
tradition/religion/superstition
Ex. Azande and witchcraft—make rational
Kula (Malinowski shows how this practice make sense to those
who could have thought it was
irrational)
In Enlightenment ideas the concept of civilization was consider
ed to be the highest form of
human achievement. One goal of the Enlightenment was to brea
k down tradition or religious
understandings as the ultimate source of truth.
“civilization can be defined as that which advances man's knowl
edge and virtue”, try to reason
everything.
Emic—
from the perspective of the subject or the particular culture
Etic—from the perspective of the observer as scientist
Malinowski uses Social
Idea that there are “forces” exerted at group organizational level
that exceed the individual.
“Social facts are the values, cultural norms, and social structure
s which transcend the individual
and are capable of exercising a social constraint.”
The social of non-human animals is less durable precisely becau
se they lack multi-generational
institutional structures.
Boas Uses culture
Traditions, beliefs, and behaviors, and customs transmitted by l
earning.
Who has culture?Was thought to be a defining characteristic of
“Man” (Humans)
Boas rejects understandings of culture as evolution or stages an
d instead focuses on their

4. uniqueness and cultural relativity.
cultural relativism -
The idea that each culture was the product of a unique and parti
cular
history, and not merely generated by race and environment.
His ideas are coming somewhat from German reaction to Enligh
tenment idea of civilization and
progress of humans understood as a singular humanity. Progress
of humanity as a whole
becoming more rational through conscious acts and a break with
tradition.
He stuck to Charles Darwin's own conception of evolution: that
change occurred in response to
current pressures and opportunities.
The new standards as applied to cultural anthropology required t
hat ethnographers go on
location, learn the language, and undertake an intense survey th
at include all the elements
(mythology and tribal lore, religion, social taboos, marriage cus
toms, physical appearance, diet,
handicrafts, means of obtaining food, and so on) well as whatev
er other unique feature that were
apparent.
Herder
claims that develop of any individual person is limited to “geniu
s” or “spirit” of the
group to which the individual belongs. essential quality to a par
ticular culture. going against
civilization, defend the tradition.
This concept of culture was therefore difficult to define and had
a spiritual unchanging, and ideal
aspect to it in Herder and this has come into the history of anthr

5. opology. Thinking of essence is
thinking that there is some essential quality, aspect, substance,
or ideal that defines what
something is, then I am thinking of something as an ideal type,
unchanging and eternal, and
thinking is spiritual or metaphysical at its core.
Herder thought about culture as tradition, nation, place and the
“spirit” of a people. These ideas
thought of culture as unconscious and natural, almost like an or
ganism.
civilization/culture and civilization/savage
Definition of Culture
High culture—the arts of the upper classes.
Tylor’s definition of culture is “that complex whole
which includes knowledge, belief, art,
morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acqui
red by man as a member of
society”.
“Tylor had an idea of evolution of culture…. “savagery” throug
h “barbarism” to “civilization”.
Culture was considered as a whole
- an integrated system, all aspects of a culture are related to
all others.
How do “we” break up a whole:One way is to create spheres of
culture
Ex. we can talk about the economic, the political, the religious
or law.
A holistic approach wants to look at how all aspects of human s
ociety/culture influence each
other and cannot really be separated.
Cultural holism
can help us see connections between different aspects of a soci
ety.

6. - can also lead to overly bounded view of culture.
An overly bounded view of culture can limit looking at understa
ndings of temporality, change ,
history, power, and global connections.
Dualistic Terms: two opposed aspects
Objectivity/subjectivity
Civilized/savage
Rational/irrational
Functionalism
Malinowski thought that what he considered to be basic and uni
versal human needs were met by
different rituals, institutions and other social formations in diffe
rent societies or cultures.
Malinowski wanted to show the rationality of all humans, as wel
l as to explore what he
considered to be a universal human nature. So, cultures are all
different, but human nature is the
same in this view of humans.
Concept of coeval—
that all people share the same historical time on the planet
Time as a problem in cultural concept: evolution of types of cult
ures, at stake in a bounded view
of culture.
evolution versus history/change, evolution seems natural and no
t political.
Need to think about: History, Exchange, Conflict, Conquest, Po
wer
Malinowski

7. ’s approach was one that considered its methods to be rigorous,
objective, and
scientific. One can observe (and participate) and ultimately kno
w about the structures and
functions of a society or culture. Boas and Mead also do not pr
oblematize their ability to make
what they consider to be truthful claims about an entire culture
or society.
Symbolic Anthropology
Geertz
still looks at a culture as a bounded whole that can be described
.
The difference with Geertz’s approach is that he thinks specific
ally about how the anthropologist
interprets the symbolic interpretations of a culture. Here anthro
pology is an interpretation of an
interpretation and not a science looking for “laws” of a culture/s
ociety.
Geertz believed that an analysis of culture should "not [be] an e
xperimental science in search of
law but an interpretive one in search of meaning"
Geertz defined culture
as "an historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in
symbols,
a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms b
y means of which men
communicate,perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about an
d their attitudes toward life”
Interrogating truth in Coming of Age
Anthropologists are interested in:
Situated knowledge, relational knowledge, partial knowledge. C
o-creation of ethnographer and
interlocutor
Importance of who one talks to:

8. Samoan Chiefs different than Adolescent girls
Difference of who goes to the field:
Mead is 23 and female. Freeman is 66 and male.
Difference of when one goes to the field:
The 1920s are different from the 1960s.
Topics in Mead and Freeman:
All understanding is positional
We should consider the problem of “historical tracking” in anthr
opological practices
Need to pay attention to stratification of a society in terms of ge
nder, sex, class, rank etc.
Need to pay attention to difference between public/private conv
ersations and the effect that
publication of anthropological knowledge can have on informan
ts.
Limits of any attempt to speak about or for a whole culture. Pro
blematizes the culture concept.
- Ethical concerns about representing the “truth” of a group—
culture, ethnos, people.
-
Need to think about partial, situated positioning of anthropolog
ical knowledge
Symbolic anthropology
looks at key symbols and especially rituals to understand cultur
e
Synchronic study lets us see patterns and relations between ele
ments like seeing the grammatical
structure of a language.
Synchronic study as opposed to diachronic study influences clas

9. sic anthropology such as that of
Malinowski, Mead, Boas and Evans-Pritchard.
Synchronic—one point in time
Diachronic—over time historical
Symbol
Something that represents or stands for something
else (to someone)
Language is symbolic
What a symbol encompasses is not fixed within one culture but
can change historically
Symbolic understandings and extensions of symbolic categories
can be quite different between
cultures and different historic periods.
Essence
is the attribute or set of attributes that make an entity or substan
ce what it fundamentally
is, and which it has by necessity, and without which it loses its i
dentity.
does not engage with historical emergence, we don’t ban a timel
ess essence of a god.
Current anthropology is generally an anti-essence approach to k
nowledge
Essence is interested in ideal types, does not think about history
, does not think about process,
does not think about relation, does not think about emergence.
we are looking at a how meaning is derived relationally, how an
d when terms emerge.
Essence type thinking has been used to try to define: categories
of culture, race, ethnos, and sex
defining something with its attributes, should be thinking histor
ically, in terms of process, and
relationally.
historical thinking wants to know how something emerged, it is

10. always relational and process
oriented. we want to know how something became what it is
, how categories and concepts
emerged, how concepts and categories are defined in relationshi
p to each other.
We need to look at power
within societies and cultures. We need to look at how power op
erates
to create distinction, class, rank and hierarchy
For example Malinowski was studying the men of high rank whe
n he followed the kula
exchange system. And Freeman was enveloped in certain status
hierarchies when he interacted
mainly with the chief class in Samoa.
Categories help make worlds and worldview
frosting/sauce - (defined in relation to each other - all becomes
frosting)
table clean/floor dirty- only eat on table
kids are making categories; getting their family to go along with
“culture” that has “norms” and
“power” in it. May even have some “knowledge”, “morality” or
“power/knowledge” in these
worldviews.
Norms vary among different cultures. What you think should ha
ppen/natural, morality/ethic,
knowledge.
Everything is influenced by power/knowledge relationship.
examples of categories that become norms, power, knowledge, r
elational meaning.
taken for granted- norms, what seems natural

11. categories become normalized (norms) in relationship to power
Norm= normal, normal becomes natural
unchanging essential time-less truth of really real reality
norm becomes an essence - seen as not only the normal and the
natural but also the correct, the
law, the moral, the pure, and possibly the sacred.
Power/Knowledge
challenges idea that knowledge has no relationship to power, po
litics, or effecting world and that
truth is outside of human power relationships, slash represents
they go together, cannot separate.
look at how knowledge (disciplinary knowledge) has effects on
the world. The discipline creates
who you are/who you can become
, ex. educational system forms subjects that gets embodied in
students in which you reject other dispositions.
look at how understandings of cultural evolution influenced thin
king about development theory
and practice. how development theory (tied to cultural evolution
) has power in the world to
organize.
power always has its knowledge
body is important in understanding of power/knowledge
body is disciplined, one becomes a certain kind of subject with
certain capacities from
disciplinary practices. ex. the school-sitting in a chair, the priso
n, the factory
forms of power/knowledge in particular locations produce speci
fic disciplined bodies and
dispositions
“you are certain person, certain capacities from these experienc
es” ex. working long hours

12. Sugar
luxury item → everyday consumer item for workers
Industrialization, capitalist type forms starts in the history of th
e plantation system.
system of labor- slavery, indentured labor, factory labor
emergence of slavery system and proletariat (working class) bot
h connected to sugar and their
production and consumption.
biological substance- part of plant and what it does to human bo
dy, human evolution.
food has relationship to rank, power, status, mentality. What cul
tural forms are mobilized around
the consumption of sugar?
How do common foods create culture/worldviews? related to tak
en for granted? how is
production/consumption related to understandings of morals and
ethics?
issues of the body, intense reactions involving the body
who gets what? and why do they get it
Taboo prohibition because too sacred or too accursed.
forbidden to profane (not sacred) use or contact because of what
are held to be dangerous
“supernatural” powers
banned on grounds of morality or taste
only permitted for certain categories of person
banned as constituting a risk
Purity/pollution -categorized through power, norms, cultural for
ms, what someone considers as
polluted is different from one culture to another
sacred/profane
sacred-revered, holy
purity/danger
“dirt in the garden is ok, but not in the bedroom”

13. Eternal
is not the same as synchronic- eternal is similar to timeless but
synchronic is one
moment in a linear historical time.
Subjective does not equal bias or error, it’s part of intersubjecti
ve conversation, want to know
what it means by objectivity. subjectivity seen as bias or false is
a normed, power/knowledge
categorical formation of the U.S
Relational meaning
: categories defined in relationship to each other and not with es
sential
attributes
grammar operates as a structural system of reading
helps to see how system works as opposed to thinking that the c
ategories of a particular
knowledge system are a true, normal, and natural description of
ultimate reality.
Karl Marx
For Marx the commodity was a strange phenomena
Marx thinks that capitalist ideology makes us see the commodit
y as having a value that is
inherent (essential) to it. ex. brushing hair, the idea of brush
capitalist worldview tend to see a world of things
because they are commodities and not relations
or process
therefore we often equate value to some essential quality or esse
nce of a commodity, ex.gold has
value because it has gold essence, we see value in chair because

14. of its chair-ness
when it becomes a commodity or exchange by money, the value
of the chair is coming from the
chair itself-essence thinking. He says chair has value because of
its labor and relationship of
production.
The commodity fetish
Fetishism to make sense of the apparently magical quality of the
commodity, refer to primitive
belief that godly powers can inhere an inanimate things.
fetish- attempt to understand radically different conceptions of
what is valuable, something that
someone else values that the speaker does not understand why s
he/he values it.
desire shouldn’t have because it doesn’t have value,
Marx: “you love commodities in an irrational way, ignoring lab
or”, opposite of Boas and
Malinowski.
looking at how savage consumers are.
the commodity remains simples as long as it is tied to its use va
lue. when a piece of wood is
turned into a table through human labor, its use value is clear an
d as product, the table remains
tied to its material use. however, as soon as the table emerge as
a commodity, it changes into a
thing which transcends sensuousness. the connection to the actu
al hands of the laborer is severed
as soon as the table is connected to money as the universal equi
valent for exchange. people in a
capitalist society thus begin to treat commodities as if value inh
ered in the objects themselves
rather than in the amount of real labor expended. ex. apple prod
ucts, factory workers jump off of
the building
Mercantilism- economic theory practice, promoted governmenta

15. l regulation of a nation's
economy for power, sell as much commodities as they can, raw
materials come into europe and
make commodity, send it back to colonies and colonies have to
buy that product, history of
european competing each other in terms of trade through acquiri
ng colonial land, see colony as
part of their system, system in which european colonialism gets
going.
Strange/Familiar
study how another group cuts up “reality” into different categori
es. Make this strange worldview
seem not strange, but understandable. The categories can be unc
onscious like how one knows a
grammar of a language to use it but cannot explain it or even re
cognize the different categories in
use. cutting the world in different categories: language makes di
fferences, malinowski figuring
out the function of kula.
one can see the categories that one use in their own culture from
learning about those of another
group and making comparison - taking for granted.
make familiar worldview seem strange, start to be able to see it.
through the lens of categories in another world.
we are studying different interpretations of the world, doing ana
lysis of analysis.
one can say that this is an error or false way of thinking, one ca
n also say that this is a correct
view of the world, but anthropologists most interested in lookin
g at different types of categorical
systems to look at what kind of world

16. a particular kind of dividing up the world procedures,
study it as cultural form, what kind of world that has two positi
ons and which is more “fair” one?
understand the logic of something in its own terms.
Norms
when a categorical understandings being the dominant ones in a
particular place or time then it’s
a norm. Norm is a result of power/knowledge system.
natural- as if created by the world itself and not created by parti
cular
cultures/or political and economic systems are creating the cate
gories, changeable by political
economic system or action.
View of dividing culture
european colonialism- meeting of very different conceptions of
reality in very unequal power
relationships. It is from this historical reality that anthropology
emerges. Different reality
systems that happen in unequal power relationship, attach to ide
a of value.
other is savage, irrational, backward.
For Malinowski and Boas etc - other is rational, deserving of re
spect, look at the world that this
system produces. Cultural relativity
- Do not have to say if it is error or correct, but what kind
of world does it produce- what is happening in that culture? fro
m within the logic of its system,
look at each one as they are.
Coeval
- everybody emerge at the same time and have the same history,
no progress. how could
people have less history than other people?
progressive- slowly get better has to have a value system, probl
ematic because of opposition of

17. views.
How time is often ignored in ethnography as coevalness is usual
ly denied to the other.
Critiques
Culture concept has been critiqued for producing “ethnographic
time” (eternal forever) and an
idea of culture that seems like an timeless essence while at the s
ame time ignoring: history,
power, and global connections. Need historical and conceptual p
erspective.
They often look at their own culture or taken for granted and qu
estion it with what they learn
from other cultures or taken for granted categorical systems.
Value
kula- see a world of relation
supply and demand, object has to be created in the culture
commodity fetish- see a world of things; laborers seem half dea
d, want the labor hidden because
of exploitation.
inherent attribute of a substance essence
use value
focus on labor as the source for value- see relations of productio
n;able to see the laborer and the
relationship between the laborer and the consumer
remember that the origin of the word fetish comes out of coloni
alism and radical differences in
what is considered valuable between portuguese colonist and pe
ople in africa.
what happens in a world where each different conception of val
ue is the one that is considered

18. correct? what world is produced?
human is commodity, no longer a laborer - burma shrimp labor
Jamaica Kincaid - brings us up to date from history of colonialis
m - sugar producing island, after
slavery is outlawed. POST-colonialism, how is it present in Kin
caid’s narrative? Antiguans don’t
benefit from the tourist industry of global economic system. Th
e tourist may experience the
beauty on the surface of Antigua while being wholly ignorant of
the actual political and social
conditions that the tourism industry reinforces. hierarchical stru
cture still present.
depend on tourism to improve economy, but tourism is affecting
their culture.
Life and Debt
ties structural inequalities between nations to international mon
etary structures
look at how debt functions so that the debtor cannot get out of t
heir debt
the one who owes money has the ability to dictate policies withi
n a nation
tied to older world system such as colonial mercantilism and pla
ntation system
is Jamaica now worse than when it was dominated?
no economic strength from independence
the particular system of the way it has to be - IMF
debt keeps going up, impossible to pay off the debt
talking as if policy has to be that way, natural system- IMF
IMF wanted to devalue the Jamaican currency, the reason behin
d it was to expand the exports so
it would be cheaper for other countries to buy their products. th
e devaluation leads and demand

19. of imported goods lead Jamaica to a deeper debt.
fieldwork can ignore histories of trade, colonialism, slavery, de
bt, and austerity regimes (reduce
spending/increase taxes) ?? outside of power/knowledge relation
ship.
for IMF policies are natural and law like, they are what has to h
appen according to laws of
economics
the powerful get to impose their rules;being owed to debt is pow
erful position to name terms
no trade barriers for jamaica;milk production subsidized in the u
.s, europe, and canada
owe money- get to set the rules
debt might never get paid off, credit card
Small Place
The bad behavior of individual English people never seems to af
fect the general reverence for
English culture. People of Antigua can express themselves only
in the language of those who
enslaved and oppressed them.
connection between colonial past of the island and its impoveri
shed, corrupt present.
The lives of others, no matter how poor and sad, are part of the
scenery tourists have come to
enjoy - essence of tourism
Antiguans have been taught to admire the very people who once
enslaved them.
It is the people from the “large places” who determine events, c
ontrol history, and even control
language, antiguans became passive objects.
Their ministers claim to be working for the greater good while l
ining their own pockets just like
the British claimed to be bringing civilization to the colonized t
erritories while actually

20. exploiting them and taking from them as much as they could.
The status of the library is emblematic of the status of the islan
d as a whole: damaged remnants
of a colonial structure remain, but the Antiguans are unable eith
er to repair it or to move on to a
new structure, Japanese cars owned by government officials for
car loans- money making
scheme
Antigua is the ultimate “small place,” and its struggles are like t
hose of all such places as they try
to define themselves against the “large” places and forces of the
world.
Outsiders are “locked out” of understanding what the lives of th
e insiders are truly like. The
insiders are “locked in” in a similar way—
they belong to the landscape more than it can ever
belong to them.
Social darwinism and herbert spencer
social darwinism is cultural evolution, not darwinian evolution i
n biology class.
has a telelology- a goal, idea of progressing to an ideal end poin
t that is predetermined
believes in progress, capitalist western culture is the end goal.
spencer inspired by darwin, missing darwin’s main points
there is no reason that humans have to evolve, we are not the en
d of anything
spencer believes in progress, he coined the term survival of fitte
st
spencer thought he was uncovering “laws” of social science

21. something in universe that organizes a goal or direction to the u
niverse
conservation of energy part of theory
lamarckian- traits acquired in one lifetime passed on
rich is fit and we are all unfit, not being european is not being “
fit”
mixed biological and cutlural idioms
thought the most fit were rich capitalist therefore the poor of all
backgrounds and those who
were not european thought to be less fit and not worthy
idea of progress in it, idea that life has a goal. darwinian theory
has no concept of progress or gal
in it
fitness is not an absolute category in evolutionary theory. fitnes
s is not a universal principle, but
depends on a particular environment
environment changes and organism changes, there is no hierarch
y no ultimate progress
in spencer, capitalism considered to be the most evolved
Development
declaration of human rights
altruistic
need greater productivity
focus on technology claim to be beyond politics- who could be a
gainst development?
ultimate form of power/knowledge to deny any connection to po
wer
we are just trying to do “good”
natural, eventually everyone will be in a capitalist society
evolutionist in the sense of cultural evolution and social darwini
sm
prophetic- the future endpoint is this and i know it already, no h
istorical frame, history is not
what had to happen.

22. Undevelopment
avoid history and politics because we view development as part
of life and if people aren’t
developed at the same pace then there is problem in their “natur
e”.
denying that certain colonies could create their industry
other countries should model themselves after the west
what does backward mean?
racism is not biological fact but social, political, historical fact
no biological basis but real
two people are coded a particular race, two people coded anothe
r race, genetic analysis is more
likely that there is more genetic similarities between the groups
than within the groups
reflect instead an evolutionary response to “shared environment
al exposures.
Hall calls a floating signifier because its meaning and what justi
fies its reality shifts
historically
Genes that affect skin pigmentation or blood proteins involved i
n malarial resistance, the
authors note, may not measure direct and unique ancestry but re
flect instead an
evolutionary response to “shared environmental exposures.” Fur
thermore, the tests are
based on comparisons to databases of DNA from living populati
ons, and are therefore
vulnerable to “systematic bias” because of “incomplete geograp
hic sampling” or the fact
that “present­day patterns of residence are rarely identical to wh
at existed in the past.
only a fraction of people with a gene variant linked to a disease

23. actually become ill.
Hall
logic of how it works, and cultivated in our imagination
intelligence civilized, racist believe not result of our environme
nt or genetic
inferior mental capacities
hall argues with discursive position, analyze the stories told by
culture about what physical racial
differences mean
Hall
grouping of centralized characteristics , when the system of clas
sification become the object of
disposition of power, become this group should be treated that
way
the use of classification as system of power
way of maintaining the order of the system, one group has a mu
ch more positive value than other
group
Mary Douglas - “matter of out of place”, purity and pollution. d
irt in the garden belongs to the
garden not bedroom.
within in the order when somebody disturbs the natural order of
who gets what and why and
know how aspects are divided then tension occurs
function as common code of society
how definitions are raised?
everything kind of inscribed of their species being
concept of essence
Floating Signifier - systems and concepts to a culture that’s mak
ing meaning to a culture, shifting
relations of difference, relational (things are connected) not ess
ential and never be finally fixed.
resignified in different cultures, moments of time, and history
biological, genetically (without trace) and socio-historical
race more like a language

24. it’s reality, seeing around you
race can’t be tested against diversity but within the differences t
hat we construct in our
“language”
discursive concept- the systems we use to make sense to make h
uman societies intelligible, how
we organize and make meanings, understanding of difference to
ideas that difference organize
human practices and individuals.
differences occur but what matters is how make meanings and th
oughts on those differences.
how does discursive construct related to mintz sugar?
It created identity in the aristocracy and
later a manufactured sense of freedom among the working class
“are they born another creation?”. religion understanding of sig
nifer of knowledge and truth
“them in the boats and us up on the civilization”
genetically test humans to classify their differences and that the
y are different species, provide
knowledge of absolute difference
find what marks the difference INSIDE the species, whatever is
in the discourse of culture that
grounds the truth of human diversity, unpuzzle the human differ
ence that matters, discursive
construction
Current historical approach to anthropology does not include:
1.
an evolutionary and teleological stages approach such as cultura
l evolution, social
darwinism, or modernization history

25. 2.
we are interested in contingent history and not some teleologica
l (ultimate goal) oriented
notion of progress that replaces history.
how your evidence relates to the conceptual or historical point y
ou are making
don’t overthink, be concise.
why/how this is important in terms of anthropological practice o
r why the term is important to
think about some aspect of how we can understand the world we
live in or make changes to it.
Du Bois - color hair and bone
Hall- visual differences
ascribed status- little or no choice about occupying status
achieved status - not automatic, but come through traits, talents,
actions, efforts, activities and
accomplishments
500 different phenotypes in Brazil
differences seem as an economic class
how is racism constructed in a 500 different racial labels
caste look phenotypically the same - is this race?
relationships of oppression- marry people within their social gro
up
discrimination of koreans in japan
Hall
race works like a language
subject to constant process of redefinition, meaning is relational
not fixed

26. anti essence thinking
one is defined by the other and does not make sense without the
other
black/white - relational meaning
overtime categories are not stable in their meaning, shifting thei
r meaning
race is biological, how it justified through religion.
not to define by its attributes but in relation to other
signifier- a symbol, sound or image that represents an underlyin
g concept or meaning
discursive- ordered by power/knowledge relationships
Mary Douglas- Purity and danger
categorical- who gets what, orders a society in terms of hierarch
y and distinctions that are given
moral ethical and political valence. symbolic value.
matter out of place dirt is ok in the garden but not the house
hegemonic - norms of ruling class.
Hello all
This week’s presentation is brought to you by Gevik and Akop.
This week we start looking at the development of the suburbs
which did not get much attention from planners due to the lack
of services until 1860.
Let’s start by looking at the scale of a house. What we know
today as the nuclear family, did not exist until 200 years ago.
People used to live in big communities and families didn’t play
a primary role in one’s social life. After the industrial
revolution and birth of capitalism, people moved to cities
looking for jobs and “better” living conditions. While some of

27. the earliest factories in New England hired young, single
women, cities generally experienced a separation of the male,
public workplace from the female domain of the private sphere.
Isolations of nuclear families in single family home created a
distance between the chaos of the industrial city and the private
home, which turned out beneficial for every middle class citizen
who sought to protect the morals of their young families;
therefore the home became very intimate and private. Home,
sweet home.
“In most primitive societies, where people belonged to the land
rather the reverse, private property was unknown.”(Jackson,
208). However, the idea of land ownership was brought by
Europeans as a “cultural baggage”. Real-estate meant power.
Therefore, it became the middle class’s goal to work hard and
purchase land. The dream of owning a private property, gave
politician the power of keeping people at work and off the
strikes. “Give him hope, give him the chance of providing for
his family, of laying up a store for his old age, of commanding
some cheap comfort or luxury, upon which he sets his heart; and
he will voluntarily and cheerfully submit to privation and
hardship.” (Jackson, 208)
For four thousand years, in nature , human congestion meant
security. For example, colonial America ns in New England
believed that having a tight community was the way and they
considered the wilderness as a dark and terrifying place. By the
early to mid-19th century, however, nature took on a romantic
or restorative quality in the minds of many Americans. Those
with the economic means built their houses farther away from
the city center. In some of the earliest development of the
suburbs, row houses started to appear. In 1860 it became
noticeable that there was no way of determining the orientation
of the house in relation to its site. There were no rules on how
much open space should be devoted to the front back and the
side. By 1870, detached housing appeared in the suburbs. Each
property had an open space in-between the next properties and
also in the front and back. This meant that the activities that

28. needed open space could now be achieved in the yard. In
addition, this meant more isolation. With the emerge of roads,
rail, electric streetcars, and eventually freeways , the suburbs
started growing away from the center of the city and continued
on becoming more isolated than ever.
Questions:
In what ways were the developments of early suburbs similar
and different from the development of the urban park movement
of the 19th century?
Did you grow up in a suburb or a city? What are some of the
advantages and disadvantages of growing in such a place?
Isolation of families and individuals are very apparent in the
reading. Activities that used to take place in the streets are now
happening in our own backyard. Therefore, leaving the streets
of suburbs nothing but a car path. How would you encourage
more activities on the streets?
The only Sources you can use are
1- Two pdf that I attached
2- This book
https://books.google.com/books?id=pW4F5RCuLS0C&pg=PA33
&lpg=PA33&dq=%22sprawl+in+the+interwar+years%22&sourc
e=bl&ots=8GpI8aWgyZ&sig=m2dW5f07yO2oIgVKo0yuYfkohH
Y&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAGoVChMI8PTY6Y2ayAIV
SRw-
Ch1iYAM7#v=onepage&q=%22sprawl%20in%20the%20interwa
r%20years%22&f=false
No internet allow

29. Parks, Suburbs and Regional Planning
This week we will shift our focus away from grand, City
Beautiful
plans, to the edges of the urban periphery. We will explore the
ideologies
and planning efforts behind early American suburbs. As
reforms in
housing and civic beautification programs made measured
improvements
in regards to overcrowding and access to public space, the rise
of the
picturesque suburb served as an anti-city: a landscape aimed at
escaping
the congestion, pollution and social tensions of the metropolis
through
spacious curvilinear streets, manicured lawns and tidy
countryside villas
and bungalows. We’ll see that though 19th century American
suburbs at
times resembled the later Garden City concept of the early
twentieth
century, they differed in fundamental ways. Nevertheless, by
the 1920s
and 1930s, a regime of regional planning gained momentum that
would
combine integration of systems of transportation, suburban
community
development and an emphasis on the natural landscape –
bringing the
“bedroom suburb” and “Garden City” into close proximity.
Closely

30. related to the development of early suburbs is the parks
movement,
dating back to the 1850s. This will be a good place to begin our
exploration.
If the urban grid symbolized rationalism, competing economic
forces of
capitalism, and the limitless expansion of the urban organism,
the rejection of
this form in the embrace of a more “natural” landscape of
suburban residential
street symbolized a moral dichotomy between the “worldly” city
and the
“domestic” suburb. In strict terms of form, the winding paths of
19th century
suburbs had much to owe to early cemetery and park design.
Mounty Auburn Cemetery,
Cambridge Massachusetts (1831)
The cohesive deign for cemeteries
like this one borrowed from English
landscape design, emphasizing an
asymmetrical program of curving
lanes and informal gardens. This
romantic setting prefigured the use
o f s u c h s p a c e s f o r S u n d a y
promenades or family picnics.
The charming landscape of urban cemeteries soon influenced
the rise of the urban
park movement. Integral to this narrative is the design of

31. Central Park in New York
City by landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert
Vaux. In the early
1850s, New Yorkers began talking about the benefits of
reserving a large portion of
land for an urban park. The idea was to bring respite from the
congestion and
tempo of the city, and to provide fresh air and access to nature:
parks were widely
considered the “lungs of the city.” After winning the design
competition in 1858
with their “Greensward” plan, Olmsted and Vaux oversaw the
implementation of
the park scheme, one that created in grand scale a highly
orchestrated, man-made
environment intended to feel completely natural and rugged.
Olmsted went on to
design other urban park systems that similarly sought to blur
distinctions between
the mad-made and the natural.
Spend about 25 minutes watching these two excerpts about
Central Park from
New York: A Documentary Film, Episode 2 – Order and
Disorder.

32. The careful articulation of urban park space as respite from the
bustling crowd and as
a means of moral and social uplift were ideas closely aligned
with developing
attitudes toward suburban living. Andrew Jackson Downing,
another 19th century
landscape architect, popularized the notion of the suburban
estate – particularly for
those who had the economic means to live outside the city.
Downing’s 1841 book, A
Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening
promoted the domestic
ideal of single family homes set within picturesque gardens.
Out of this domestic ideal came a prominent upper class
response to the industrial
metropolis: rather than reform the city, the best way to avoid
its ills was to escape
it. This mentality informed a number of early planned,
picturesque suburbs.
Downing’s colleague, Alexander Jackson Davis, designed this
plan for Llewellyn
Park, New Jersey in 1858. The organic, asymmetrical layout,
punctuated by a
central green, recalled an organic pattern rather than a rational
structured
environment. This bedroom community connected its wealthy
residents to New
Jersey by rail, evidence that the suburb depended on the city for
economic support.

33. Other early examples of picturesque, planned suburbs included
Glendale,
Ohio (18510), Lake Forest outside of Chicago (1857) and
Frederick Law
Olmsted’s design for Riverside, Chicago (1869). Here the
irregular blocks
resemble plant cells in a leaf, underscoring the organic or
natural aesthetic
intended for the suburban dweller.
Other early examples of picturesque, planned suburbs included
Glendale,
Ohio (18510), Lake Forest outside of Chicago (1857) and
Frederick Law
Olmsted’s design for Riverside, Chicago (1869). Here the
irregular blocks
resemble plant cells in a leaf, underscoring the organic or
natural aesthetic
intended for the suburban dweller.
These early designs for suburban retreats for the city
established the iconology
of the suburb: the front lawn, winding streets and sidewalks,
the buffer zone
between single family, cottage style homes. By the turn of the
century, these
neighborhoods were ubiquitous across the U.S., surrounding
central cities as
self-contained spheres of domesticity. In the decades after
WWI, the
decentralized model of suburban living, influenced by exposure
to the Garden

34. City model, became popular among a new wave of urban
planners who
worked on a regional scale, rather than focusing on the
metropolis alone.
As we move ahead to explore the connection between urban and
suburban
growth and the planning in the interwar years, it will be helpful
to pause and
make a few comments about the state of the urban planning
profession and
the development of zoning in the U.S. after the turn of the
century.
This emphasis on zoning gives us insight into the ways in which
planners
began to conceive of the whole city as the sum of its parts,
including its
interrelated suburban developments. The effort to integrate city
and suburb
gained momentum in the 1920s under a few key methods: first,
the
investment in interurban transportation systems that linked
center and
periphery; and second, the focused energy of the Regional
Planning

35. Association of America (RPAA) which sought to combine
Progressive planning
ideals with an economic policy of federal funding. Both
developments had an
influential role in the development of pre-WWII suburbs.
Let’s begin by considering the role of transportation and
suburbs. On the
following slide, you’ll see two maps of the city of Boston. The
first depicts
Boston in 1842; notice the scale of the map, which captures the
developed
portions of the city. The second map shows the city in 1885
according to the
Planned West End Street Railway system. As the city adopted
the
revolutionary technology of the streetcar in the second half of
the nineteenth
century, the city’s geographic reach multiplied quickly. Electric
rail lines
dramatic altered American urban and suburban landscapes by
allowing people
who worked in the city center to live in the outskirts or suburbs,
where homes
could be larger, spaced out, and land was less expensive.
h"ps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
History_of_the_MBTA#/media/File:
1885_West_End_Street_Railway_map.png
Boston, 1842 Boston, 1885

36. This additional map of the Boston region
was featured in Sam Bass Warner’s history
of Boston transportation, Streetcar
Suburbs: The Process of Growth in
Boston, 1870-1900 (1961). Warner’s
study demonstrated that urban residents
are only willing to commute to work
between 30 to 40 minutes each way.
With the aid of new transportation
methods – first the horse-drawn omnibus,
and later cable or electric streetcars, the
distance a resident could travel between
home and work in the same period
increased significantly. As a result, the
square mileage of the developed area
expanded exponentially. Prior to electric
rail lines, the size of cities was generally
confined to about 12 miles square, or a
radius of 2 miles. The electric trolley car
allowed cities to become about 5 times
larger because people could travel farther
in the same amount of time. Warner
claimed that this process of urban
expansion resulted in largely unplanned
urban sprawl, although we have already
seen examples of how early suburbs were
highly planned extensions of the city,
connected via rail lines.
The
sprawling
nature

37. of
LA’s
urban
landscape
was
largely
predetermined
by
the
network
of
interurban
railways
constructed
by
Henry
HunLngton’s
Pacific
Electric
Railway.
By
1900,
Los
Angeles
featured
over
1,000
mile
of
track.

38. As much as the streetcar paved the way to early
suburbanization, the automobile
likewise allowed cities to grow horizontally. Rather than an
unplanned sprawl,
however, the argument can be made that planners early took a
rational approach to
urban planning that integrated complex automobile traffic
patterns and connected
the central city with suburb through highly purposeful parkways
and bridges. The
case of New York is illustrative, centering on the powerful
figure of Robert Moses.
Robert
Moses,
New
York’s
City
Park
Commission,
came
to
be
known
as
the
city’s
“master
builder.”
Moses
used
his

39. influence
in
city
and
state
planning
agencies
to
transform
New
York
through
massive
building
projects
and
highway
systems
that
linked
residents
to
recreaLonal
spaces.
He
was
criLcized
widely
for
his
abuse

40. of
power,
his
lack
of
sensiLvity
toward
working
class
neighborhoods,
and
his
dogmaLc
reliance
on
the
car
as
a
central
planning
consideraLon.
We
will
revisit
Moses
later
in
the
course
when

41. we
discuss
urban
redevelopment,
but
for
today,
his
planning
for
transportaLon
in
the
1920s
and
1930s
is
instrucLve.
One of Moses’ adaptations of the urban environment to the new
predominance of
the automobile was the proliferation of the parkway. Parkways
were “limited-
access highways designed for private-car traffic only, and
deliberately landscaped
to provide a recreational experience.” (Peter Hall, 114). Moses
designed several
parkways as a part of a recreational park plan for the greater
New York region
which included public beaches, hundreds of parks and

42. playgrounds, and municipal
pools. In an effort to give New Yorkers access to ocean
beaches, many of which he
improved through importing white sand and recreational
facilities.
Public pool project in Astoria, Queens initiated by Moses in
1936.
What is notable in many but not all of Moses’ parkways was
that they purposely
precluded truck and bus traffic on account of low bridge
heights. This effectively
reserved many of the pleasant new beaches for middle class car
owners,
excluding about two-thirds of New York’s population, which
would continue to
ride the subway to Coney Island, an amusement park which by
the 1930s and 40s
was gaining and increasingly seedy reputation as a site of mass
urban leisure.
The access to Moses’ recreational parkway system was,
therefore, restricted. In
essence, then, they were a privatized form of public space.
Robert Moses’ Jones Beach tower and Wantagh Parkway. Note
the low clearance of the bridge.
Moses’ Triborough Bridge also reinforced the car as a dominant
agent of

43. change in urban form, as now a commute to Manhattan was now
possible from
20 to 30 miles away. The population of peripheral counties
boomed during
the 1920s, and it is perhaps no surprise that the iconic
Levittown, which
became a symbol of a mass-produced, standardized suburban
landscape, was
located just off an interchange of one of Moses’ parkways.
SHORT essay questions
How did an overly bounded and ahistorical view of culture influ
ence how Mead, Malinowski,
and Freeman represented the people they studied?

44. Discuss some of the historical relationships between the Enlight
enment, colonialism, and
anthropology.
Describe how Malinowski and Boas revolutionized what had bee
n called “armchair”
anthropology.
The position of the anthropologist is an important consideration
in fieldwork. Referencing the
Mead and Freeman controversy discuss how the position of the
anthropologist in the field
influences the production of anthropological knowledge.
Classic anthropologists tended to avoid thinking about the effec
ts of colonialism on their work.
Discuss the consequences of this tendency and consider how a r
enewed focus on colonialism
changes anthropology.
Classic anthropology attempted to show that the native’s perspe
ctive was actually
understandable and rational instead of strange and irrational. Us
e examples to illustrate this fact.
Explain how both the consumption and production of products c
an produce differences in rank
and distinction.
Explain how categories or categorical systems influence perspec
tives or worldviews and why
this is significant to the study of anthropology.