Wykad 12

Last time we talked about?

Emic and etic perspectives Cultural materialism of Marvin Harris Postmodern anthropology Clifford Geertz Situated knowledges Multiple interpretations

Cultural change:
Innovation Diffusion Cultural loss Acculturation Responses to cultural change

Innovation Mechanism of change: Innovation

Primary innovation: The firing of clay 25,000 years ago discovered by food foragers but only in 7000 and 6500 B.C sedentary farmers in Southwest Asia applied fired clay to make containers and cooking vessels Secondary innovation: Initially handmade, then the potters wheel was invented and led to mass production

Why do innovations not always catch up?

Innovation must be consistent with a societys needs, values and goals if it is to be accepted; yet this is not sufficient enough

Qwerty Keyboard (1874)

In 1930s Dvorak invented and improved keyboard.

Diffusion
Diffusion: spread of customs and practices from one culture to another.

Diffusion: Pilgrims and Native Americans

 The Pilgrims would have starved to death had the Indian Squanto not shown them how to grow the Native American crops: corn, beans, squash Other foods borrowed by European Americans from American Indians Culture is a thing of shreds and patches Robert Lowie There is no such a thing as pure culture 90 % of any cultures content is borrowed Ralph Linton People are creative about their borrowing, picking and choosing from multiple possibilities and sources.

Awareness of the extent of the borrowing can be eye opening

200 plants and herbs used for medicinal purposes: Coca in cocaine Ephedra in ephedrine Datura in pain relievers Cascara in laxatives different varieties of cotton moccasins

Diffusion is not unconditional

Acceptance of innovation depends: on the perceived superiority to the method or object it replaces; it is connected with prestige of innovator and recipient groups Why does accepting innovations from other cultures have more obstacles than homegrown innovations? For example, in the U.S. people reluctant to give up on the awkward and cumbersome old system of weights and measures? Feet, inches, gallons, oz. (ounces), etc.

Culture Loss Cultural change also involves a loss of culture

Chariots and carts widespread in the Middle East in biblical times disappeared by 6th century A.D. CAMELS: pack animals worked better and were labor saving* longevity, endurance and ability to ford rivers and traverse rough ground without the need to build roads

Is the wheel an ineluctable stage of human progress?

Wheels, like wings, fins, and brains, are exquisite devices for certain purposes, not signs of intrinsic superiority

Forcible change Acculturation

ACCULTURATION: Occurs when groups having different cultures come into intensive firsthand contact Actual of threatened use of force is always a factor Cultural change forced upon other groups are a result of conquest or colonialism

ACCULTURATION
Merger or fusion when two cultures lose their separate identities and form a new one (melting pot ideology, syncretism) One culture loses its authority and becomes a subculture (in the form of caste, class or ethnic identity) typical of conquest or slavery institutions

Acculturation Extinction
Extinction: 1,500 Yanomami in Brazil in the 1980s died as victims of deliberate massacres, as cattle ranchers and miners poured into northern Brazil. By 1990, 70 percent of the Yanomamis had been unconstitutionally expropriated; their fish supplies poisoned by mercury contamination of rivers

Acculturation Genocide
Extermination of one group by another, usually in the name of progress, either as a deliberate act or the accidental outcome of ones activities with little regard for their impact of others Jews, gypsies, and homosexuals in Nazi Germany Using gas on Kurdish villagers by the Iraqi regime in 1988 Massacre at Mystic, Connecticut (1637) setting the Pequot village on fire: mostly women and children, colonial authorities forbade the mention of the Pequots name. Massacre at Wounded Knee (1890) on the Lakota Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota

Directed change
British anthropology a handmaiden of the countrys colonial rule In the U.S. the Bureau of American Ethnology (Indian affairs) Applied anthropology: a by-product of colonial dealings; can be used to solve problems in an enormous variety of fields.

Health and medicine Business Human rights Education Environmental issues Community development Museums

Reactions to acculturation: Assimilation

Persons self-consciously reject their own past and adopt an identity to share more fully in the supposed benefits of the dominant cultures A conversion from Indian to mestizo (of Indian and European extraction) identity in the Andes wholesome rejection of Indian identity and identification with what is seen as white or Hispanic. Indian children, abducted from their parents homes on their reservations, were brought to the Carlisle Indian School, in Pennsylvania, in hopes of killing the Indian to save the man, the phrase used to explain the policy of assimilation.

Reactions to acculturation: Hybridity/Syncretism

blending of indigenous and foreign elements into a new system The play of cricket in the Trobriand Islands used to strengthen clan identity; a ritual way of communicating enmity and competition between matriclans; they adopted the rules to the local circumstances Creolization whether a result of displacement and social encounter, a dynamic interchange of symbols and practices, eventually leading to new forms.

Reactions to cultural change: revitalization movements

A deliberate construction of a more satisfactory culture, e.g. in response to visible discrepancy between culturally defined aims and the available means Segments of society that find their conditions to be at odds with the American dream: 1960s: The Hippies: peace, equality, individual freedom (persistent war, poverty, culture of conformism) Revitalization movements as reactions against the perceived threat to the dream by dissenters and activists, by foreign powers, globalization, the United Nations, by new ideas, and complexity of modern life: 1980s today: The religious right; right-wing militias

According to militia logic, it is not capitalist corporations that have turned the government against them but the international cartel of Jewish bankers and financiers, media moguls, and intellectuals who have already taken over the United States and turned it into ZOG (ZionistOccupied Government). Kimmel, Rural Masculinities

Reactions to cultural change: revolutionary movement

A revitalization movement from within directed primarily at a cultures ideological system and at attendant social structures 98 % Former colonies, economically poor countries of Africa, Asia, and Central and South America, respond to exploitation of their resources and labor by more powerful countries

Rebellion and revolution

75 % Failure of the emerging nation-states and their governing elites to recognize the cultural, political and economic rights of the people of other nationalities under the states authority nation killing rather than nation building?

Not all revolts are truly revolutionary in their consequences

According to Max Gluckman, rebellions throw the rascals out and substitute Chinese revolution and patriarchy: Chinas economic expansion and success is due to the low -wage labor of women and no-wage labor. The heads of the patrilineal households allocate the labor done for the households; women as commodities In the 1990s outbreak of abduction of sale of women from rural areas as brides and workers.

How about the Arab spring or Occupy Wall Street?

Occupy Wall Street is a leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors genders and political persuasions. The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99 % that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1 %...