culture studies, cultural materialism, culture and personality, material culture, nature and culture explained from routledge encyclopedia of social and cultural anthropology

1. Terms
Related
to
Culture
from
social
and
anthropological
points
of
view
Nur
Yıldırım

2. Overview
• Cultural
Materialism
• Cultural
Studies
• Culture
and
Personality
• Material
Culture
• Nature
and
Culture

3. Cultural
Materialism
• materialist
approach
advocated
by
Marvin
Harris,
Cultural
Materialism
(1979)'material
world
exhibits
determinisJc
influence
over
the
non-­‐material
world.
Thus
culture
is
a
product
of
relaJons
between
things.
• 'FuncJonalist
approach,
Hindu
taboo,
killing
caPle;
maximizing
economic
uJlity
of
caPle.
(factors
external
to
society,
material
ones)
ecological
anthropology,
similar
in
'factors
that
are
seen
as
determinant:
environmental
condiJons
and
subsistence
techniques:
determine
or
limit
development
of
many
other
aspects
of
culture.
• 'cogniJve
and
ideological
aspects
of
culture
must
take
second
place
to
technological
ones.
• vulgar
materialism,
crude
and
simplisJc
to
take
adequate
account
of
embededness
of
the
material
world
within
ideological
world.

4. Cultural
Studies
• BriJsh
University
System,
introduced
in
1963Contemporary
Cultural
Studies
at
Birmingham,
Richard
Hoggart,
Raymond
Williams
• 'need
to
move
beyond
canonical
definiJons
of
textuality,
in
order
to
locate
the
culture
of
literacy
in
a
wider
social
context’
• counter
the
eliJsm
of
'high
culture',
more
inclusive
• referring
anthropological
definiJon,
'culture
as
a
way
of
life
in
contrast
to
its
more
eliJst
literary
rendering
as
aestheJcs
or
appreciaJon’
• poliJcize
the
producJon
of
academic
knowledge
within
university
system,
collaboraJve
work.

5. Cultural
Studies
• Class
inequality,
Ideology
• 70s,
cultural
studies
sought
to
document
culture
as
ordinary,
popular
and
ubiquitous
• 80s,
growing
impact
of
poststructuralist,
later
psychoanalyJc
theory.
racism
and
imperialism
-­‐
maintenance
of
state
power
• concerns:
gender,
race,
class

6. Cultural
Studies
• InternaJonally:
poliJcal
approach
to
scholarship,
aPenJon
to
the
intersecJons
of
gender,
race
and
class,
criJcal
• theoreJcal
perspecJves
from
Marxism
• Postmodernism
• posiJon
rather
than
context:
a
space
in
which
criJcal,
theoreJcal
and
interdisciplinary
research
and
teaching
broadly
organized
under
the
rubric
of
the
cultural
analysis
within
developed
industrialized
socieJes

7. Cultural
Studies
• comparisons
with
anthropology:
• cultural
studies
remained
more
concerned
with
the
analysis
of
mass,
public,
dominant
popular
or
mainstream
culture,
rather
than
cross-­‐cultural
comparison.
• ant.:
represenJng
'other'
cultures,
different
from
the
anthropologist's
own.
• making
visible
cultural
tradiJons
that
are
muted,
marginal,
under-­‐represented
or
devalued
within
the
society
which
the
researcher
is
a
part.
• criJcal
perspecJves
on
the
producJon
of
knowledge
itself,
way
of
life
within
parJcular
subject
fields.

8. Cultural
Studies
• comparisons
with
anthropology:
• 'cultural
studies
is
above
all
concerned
with
the
creaJon
of
new
kinds
of
spaces
for
consideraJon
of
quesJons
which
do
not
fit
neatly
within
established
tradiJons
of
intellectual
exchange.’
• range
of
culture
models
employed;
differenJaJng
cultural
studies
from
anthropology.
Anthropologic
view:
cross-­‐
cultural
comparisons:
wide
range
of
cultural
theory,
sociology
of
culture,
its
concern
with
mass
media,
culture
industries,
cultural
theories
derivaJve
;
semioJcs,
deconstrucJon
etc.
• difference;
ant:
empirical
tradiJon,
ethnographic
observaJon.
goals
of
social
science,
documentaJon
and
representaJon
of
'other'
cultures.

9. Cultural
Studies
• Cultural
studies;
objecJvist.
Seen
by
anthropologists
as
reducJonist,
eliJst,
overly
theoreJcal
and
speculaJve
or
journalisJc
methods.
Anthropologic
separaJon
of
cultural
logics
from
their
lived
embodied
social
milieu
is
unacceptable
methodology.
• challenges
to
tendency,
consJtute
an
even
dominant
culture
as
monolithic,
totalizing
or
determining.
• anthropological
and
cultural
studies
overlap
and
inform
one
another.
highly
theoreJcal
and
criJcal
perspecJves
within
cultural
studies,
empirical
tradiJons
of
cultural
analysis
within
anthropology,
two
fields
will
remain
disJnct.

10. Cultural
Studies
• Kuper:
• cannot
be
reduced
to
the
study
of
popular
culture,
it
is
certainly
the
case
that
the
study
of
popular
culture
is
central
to
the
project
of
cultural
studies.
• understand
meanings
of
culture
we
must
analyze
it
in
relaJon
to
the
social
structure
and
its
historical
conJngency.
Social
structure
and
history
-­‐
culture
is
important
and
shapes
them,
not
studies
as
a
reflecJon
of
them
• capitalist
industrial
socieJes
divided
unequally
along
ethnic,
gender,
generaJonal
and
class
lines.
culture
is
where
this
division
established
and
contested.
Struggle
over
meaning,
dominant
group
impose
meaning
over
subordinate
groups:
that
makes
culture
ideological.

11. Cultural
Studies
• Kuper:
• Ideology
(Hall,
1982),
arJculaJon
(express
and
join
together),
cultural
texts
and
pracJces
comes
into
meaning
with
an
act
in
a
specific
context,
history
or
discourse.
Expression
is
always
connected
and
condiJoned
by
context.
• CriJcized:
celebraJon
of
the
popular
culture.
• Cultural
studies
insists
that
popular
culture
is
liPle
more
than
a
degraded
culture,
successfully
imposed
from
above,
to
make
profit
and
secure
ideological
control.
The
best
of
cultural
studies
insists
that
to
decide
these
maPers
requires
vigilance
and
aPenJon
to
the
details
of
the
producJon,
distribuJon
and
consumpJon
of
culture.
• They
should
be
read
off
from
the
moment
of
producJon
in
(meaning,
pleasure,
ideological
effect
etc.)
contexts.

12. Culture
and
Personality
• Subdisciplinary
field
of
psychological
anthropology.
American
linguist
and
anthropologist
Edward
Sapir
• influence
of
Gestalt;
percepJon
could
be
understood
only
when
the
thing
perceived
was
viewed
not
as
an
assemblage
of
separate
elements,
but
as
an
organized
paPern.
Whole
may
be
more
than
the
sum
of
its
parts.
• Meaning
was
a
funcJon
of
organized
paPerns,
Sapir
applied
this
idea
to
his
analyses
of
language
and
culture
and
personality.

13. Culture
and
Personality
• Cultural
PaPerns:
contemporary
concept
of
culture;
Jdy
tables
of
contents
aPached
to
parJcular
groups
of
people.
• culture
can
be
made
to
assume
the
appearance
of
a
closed
system
of
behavior’
• vast
reaches
of
culture
are
discoverable
only
as
the
peculiar
property
of
certain
individuals’
• Ruth
Benedict:
cultural
whole
determined
the
nature
of
its
parts
and
the
relaJons
between
them
from
ethnographic
data
concerning
kinship,
religion,
economy
etc,
aimed
to
derive
• 'more
or
less
consistent
paPern
of
thought
and
acJon
that
informed
and
integrated
all
the
pracJced
of
daily
life
in
four
different
cultures’
• Margaret
Mead:
dominant
cultural
'configuraJons',
adolescence,
gender

14. Culture
and
Personality
• early
work
on
culture
and
personality
rested
on
five
assumpJons:
• childhood
experience
determined
adult
personality
• single
personality
type
characterized
each
society
• parJcular
shared
basic
or
modal
personality
gave
rise
to
a
parJcular
cultural
insJtuJon
• projecJve
test
in
west
could
not
be
used
elsewhere
• anthropologists
were
objecJve
• what
if
personality
varies
much
more
within
society
as
it
does
across
socieJes

15. Culture
and
Personality
• Le
Vine,
80s,
culture
and
personality
research
as
follows:
interrelaJon
between
the
life
cycle,
psychological
funcJoning
and
malfuncJoning
and
social
and
cultural
insJtuJons.
'cultural
influence
in
individual
experience:
emic
views
of
normal
and
abnormal
behavior’
• psychological
anthropology,
Spiro:
person
is
not
merely
condiJoned
by
culture,
rather
culture
is
incorporated
into
the
individual
via
the
psychodynamic
processes
of
idenJficaJon
and
internalizaJon.
• child
will
unconsciously
accept
various
elements
of
culture
with
different
meanings,
according
to
biological
condiJons,
• consJtuted
by
children,
and
will
be
transformed.
How
they
consJtute
ideas
of
themselves
and
world
-­‐-­‐
answer
of
this
quesJon;
to
understand
conJnuity
and
change
in
culture
over
Jme.

16. Material
Culture
• Material
culture
had
been
an
integral
part
of
nineteenth-­‐
century
anthropology.
• museums
and
material
objects
-­‐
customs
and
cultural
traits.
lack
of
methodology,
social
and
cultural
traits,
material
arJfacts
• fieldwork,
study
of
culture
and
society
in
context.
-­‐
behavior
and
social
organizaJon
rather
than
traits.
american
definiJon,
from
traits,
to
ideas
and
bodies
of
knowledge.
• two
terms:
material
and
ideaJonal,
neglected
to
include
social,
re-­‐inclusion
of
ideaJonal
and
the
social.
• neglecJng
material
culture,
anthropologists
disconnected
it
from
rest
of
human
life;
integral
part
of
value
creaJon
processes

17. Material
Culture
• 60s,
material
culture
to
the
fore
in
the
study
of
symbolism
• Levi
Strauss,
material
culture
and
world
of
thought
• Marxist
theory
and
environmental
anthropology
-­‐
understanding
long-­‐term
social
processes
• archeology:
abstract
data
about
social
structure
and
ideaJonal
systems
• regional
systems
of
trade,
exchange,
gender
relaJons
and
value
creaJon
processes
(Munn
1986)

18. Material
Culture
• Now
it
is
a
Form
of
evidence
• In
connecJng
material
culture
to
the
person
and
to
social
life
the
sensual
properJes
of
form
–
surface,
texture,
colour,
smell,
sound
–
and
the
means
of
percepJon
become
central
topics.
Style
in
material
culture
is
recognized
as
being
an
important
marker
of
idenJty
and
status.
Fashion
–
what
people
wear,
expressing
individual
idenJty
• DisJncJons
between
objects
ojen
reflect
factors
such
as
class,
religious
affiliaJon,
group
idenJty,
age
status
or
occupaJon
• An
important
area
of
the
study
of
material
culture
that
links
the
material
with
the
social
is
researching
how
objects
gain
in
value
and
processes
of
value
transformaJon
in
space
and
Jme.
Such
studies
of
paPerns
of
material
consumpJon
have
proved
a
rich
vein
in
the
study
of
complex
socieJes.

19. Material
Culture
• Methodologically
the
study
of
material
culture
adds
an
important
dimension
to
anthropological
research.
The
form
of
the
object
can
be
interrogated
in
an
aPempt
to
uncover
material
composi-on,
manufacturing
processes,
and
func-onal
and
seman-c
a4ributes
which
can
then
be
explored
with
members
of
the
producing
socie-es
to
document
systems
of
knowledge,
trading
pa4erns
or
semiologic
systems.
• CollecJons
of
material
culture
objects
from
the
past
in
museum
collecJons
can
provide,
retrospecJvely,
vital
sources
of
informaJon
about
processes
of
social
change,
pa4erns
of
trade
and
colonial
histories.
• dialogical
rela-onship
makes
material
culture
a
rich
resource
for
studies
across
the
humani-es
and
social
sciences.
• such
an
intellectual
field
of
study
is
inevitably
eclecJc:
relaJvely
unbounded
and
unconstrained,
fluid,
dispersed
and
anarchic
rather
than
constricted.
In
short
undisciplined
rather
than
disciplined.
Materiality
is
the
fulcrum,
the
locus
of
the
nexus
of
interconnec-ons
that
creates
the
links
across
disciplinary
boundaries.

20. Material
Culture
• Kuper;
• history
of
things,
human
construcJon
of
the
environment
as
a
cultural
and
economic
landscape
• trace
the
origins
of
ideas,
also
used
material
culture
as
a
major
source
of
evidence.
• study
of
material
culture
was
missing
from
the
fieldwork
revoluJon
BriJsh
anthropology
In
the
USA
the
situaJon
was
more
complex.
Material
culture
was
an
integral
part
of
culture-­‐area
theory
and
the
ecological
evoluJonary
anthropology
of
White
and
Steward.
The
separaJon
of
material
culture
from
other
social
and
cultural
data
is
now
recognized
to
be
arbitrary,
and
objects
have
been
reintegrated
within
social
theory.
a
previously
neglected
body
of
data
that
provides
insight
into
social
processes,
and
a
bePer
understanding
of
the
artefacts
themselves.
• social
historians,
psychologists
and
exponents
of
cultural
studies.
• the
ideaJonal
systems
that
underlie
the
producJon
and
consumpJon
of
artefacts,
to
abstract
from
the
surface
correctness
of
their
form
by
connecJng
them
to
history
and
relaJng
them
to
the
diversity
of
social
processes.
Analysis
has
ojen
been
framed
in
terms
of
semioJcs
or
meaning
other
dimensions
of
its
value
which
may
include
such
factors
as
aestheJcs,
style,
symbolism
and
economics.

21. Material
Culture
• Kuper;
• The
analysis
of
material
culture
provides
informaJon
on
value
creaJon,
on
the
expression
of
individual
idenJty
and
on
the
moJvaJons
underlying
consumer
behaviour.
Increasingly
material
culture
is
being
used
as
a
source
of
informaJon
in
the
study
of
complex
socieJes
and
global
paPerns
and
processes
(Miller
1987).
•
transformaJons
in
the
value
and
meaning
of
objects
as
they
move
from
context
to
context,
either
as
part
of
local
exchange
systems
or
global
trading
processes
(Thomas
1991).
• The
study
of
material
culture
encompasses
the
analysis
of
ideological
restructurings
• Material
culture
not
only
creates
potenJal
for
but
also
constrains
human
acJon,
and
it
is
subject
to
human
agency;
people
make
meaningful
objects
but
they
can
also
change
the
meaning
of
objects.

22. Nature
and
Culture
• human
cogniJon
and
acJon
are
mediated
by
learned
and
therefore
cultural,
rather
than
by
insJncJve
or
inborn,
responses.
Since
this
is
so,
culture
is
a
separate
object
of
study,
cultural
varia-on
is
different
in
kind
from
biological
varia-on,
and
cultural
anthropology
is
an
autonomous
discipline,
separate
from
the
biological
sciences.
•
It
is
impossible
to
understand
the
concept
‘culture’
clearly
without
reference
to
its
opposing
concept,
‘nature’.
• A
theory
that
explains
the
different
varieJes
of
people,
their
customs,
and
their
apparently
different
mental
capaciJes
by
reference
to
race
(measured
each
race
against
the
supposedly
most
advanced,
the
Northern
Europeans)
• Franz
Boas,
cultural
anthropology,
(The
Mind
of
PrimiJve
Man
in
1911)
showed
that
bodily
form
is
not
linked
to
language
or
to
any
of
the
maPers
we
associate
with
culture:
altudes
and
values,
customs,
modes
of
livelihood
and
forms
of
social
organizaJon.
He
argued
that
there
is
no
reason
to
think
that
other
‘races’
(or,
more
accurately,
other
ways
of
life)
are
less
moral
or
less
intelligent
than
Northern
Europeans,
and
so
there
is
no
single
standard
for
evaluaJon.

23. Nature
and
Culture
• Different
paPerns
in
human
life;
they
could
not
have
arisen
from
a
uniform
process
of
social
or
cultural
evoluJon
but
must
rather
be
the
fruit
of
complex
local
historical
causes.
• Levi
Strauss,
argued
that
the
nature/culture
divide
is
to
be
found
among
all
socieJes
in
some
form
as
a
cogniJve
device
for
understanding
the
world.
Indeed
he
went
further,
suggesJng
that
it
is
the
very
making
of
a
dis-nc-on
between
nature
and
culture
that
dis-nguishes
humans
from
animals.
• nature
versus
culture
as
an
interpre-ve
device
throughout
anthropology.
(
men
and
women,
such
that
women,
or
perhaps
the
processes
of
childbirth,
are
natural,
whereas
men,
or
the
ritual
and
poliJcal
processes
they
control,
are
cultural)
• the
temperature
of
the
conJnuing
conflict
between
the
parJes
of
biological
and
cultural
determinism
remains
high.
This
conflict
has
ranged
in
the
twenJeth
century
across
race,
sexuality,
gender,
aggression,
intelligence,
nutriJon
and
many
more
issues
besides.

24. Nature
and
Culture
• Synthesis;
CooperaJve
effort,
by
behavioural
biologists,
psychologists
and
anthropologists,
not
so
much
to
reconcile
the
disciplines
as
to
channel
their
conflicJng
energies
into
a
greater
project.
• Beneath
and
around
the
stuff
of
culture
there
stands
a
scaffolding
of
social
abiliJes
and
disJnctly
social
intelligence.

25. • The
Social
Science
Encyclopedia
• The
Routledge
Encyclopedia
of
Social
and
Cultural
Anthropology