Social and Cultural Anthropology: A Very Short Introduction. Review article by: Thomas Riggins

6/27/2022

Social and Cultural Anthropology: A Very Short Introduction. Review article by: Thomas Riggins

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This short book (155 pages) by John Monaghan and Peter Just from Oxford University Press is a really good introduction to this subject. Although it does not transcend a bourgeois worldview it will give you the needed information to cope with literature in this field.

The book cuts to the heart of a scientific discipline too many people shy away from as too difficult, remote, or bazaar. The book is part of an Oxford University series designed to make any subject matter easily accessible to anyone interested enough to read a short, very short, introductory text that will, nevertheless, give the reader a grasp of the main points of the subject under discussion along with excellent bibliographic references for further independent study. This volume will be a welcome addition to anyone's library on ‘Third World’ issues, or more importantly, on those of the ‘Fourth World’ of indigenous peoples restricted to the margins of the world imperialist system.

Anthropology deals, historically least, with the cultures and social institutions of pre-industrial, pre-state, and pre-literate peoples. This book is designed to provide an understanding as to how such societies function, and how they relate to, and are being destroyed by, the modern world system of imperialist globalization (my term, not the authors).

I suggest this book for all activists with no prior exposure to anthropology: the more we know about Third and Fourth World peoples, especially the indigenous peoples of Africa, Asia, the Americas and the Pacific islands, the more we can understand the scope of the struggle against imperialism and the way to win allies against a common enemy.

Social and Cultural Anthropology, useful as it is as an introduction to a complicated social science, is yet a product of the bourgeois US university system.  I will outline some of the problems that Marxists must keep in mind while reading this book. First, you might not be getting the names of real persons and places in anthropology books. This is because anthropology is used by the US and other repressive governments  to keep tabs on groups that may be  a “problem.”  Wounded Knees are still a daily occurrence for indigenous peoples,  and the same US government which sponsored the original is tacitly behind the replicas throughout the world.

Second, the author’s discussion of “Cultural Relativism” is muddled and weak. They seem to confuse two different concepts: Different cultures have different values, and all cultural values are equal.

For example, the authors discuss the practice of female genital mutilation (they call it “female circumcision”) practiced by the Hofriyati people of the Northern Sudan. They say: ” We may find the consequences of such practices  repellent, but we are hard pressed to find a moral basis  for advocating its suppression that does not also violate the cultural autonomy  of the Hofriyati. One wonders , ultimately, if it is logically possible  to  simultaneously subscribe to both the notion of universal human rights and a belief in the relativity of cultures.”

I remember being told in a carpet factory outlet in India that objection to children laboring sixteen hours a day in a factory was Western cultural inference with Indian traditions. I wonder when maximizing surplus value in factories became part of the Indian tradition. In any event, I refer the authors to another book in the Oxford series, Logic: A Very Short Introduction, for the resolution of their logical conundrum.

Third, the authors use a lot of “post-modern” terms, which they don’t define and are quite meaningless, such as the “post-industrial” West. Is the West also “post-pollution”?

There is an interesting  section on Marxism and ‘’neoevolutionary anthropology’’  where the older categories of Morgan and Engels — savagery, barbarism, civilization —  are replaced by the now more generally accepted “four basic patterns of human society”— namely, foraging societies, tribal societies, chiefdoms, and states.

This  scheme is also the one used in a book previously reviewed here, Guns, Germs, and Steel, and both should be compared to The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State by Engels which was based on Henry Lewis Morgan’s Ancient Society.

Other subjects discussed in this book are religion as it relates to social structure, gender as defined in different cultures, and the “positive” side of relativism.

“When someone begins a peroration with the phrase ‘but of course it’s human nature to…’
start looking for the exit! Because what you are about to hear will most likely reflect the speaker’s most deeply held prejudices rather than the product of a genuine cross-cultural understanding. Every time anthropologists have attempted to generate universal rules governing human behavior, the rules have either been proven empirically wrong or are so trivial as to be uninteresting.”

I suggest this short book to anyone who has an interest in other cultures and peoples outside the ambit of “Western Civilization” —  of course with the caveat  any Marxist must keep in mind  when reading a bourgeois, even a progressive bourgeois, work, namely to be en garde.

Author

Thomas Riggins is a retired philosophy teacher (NYU, The New School of Social Research, among others) who received a PhD from the CUNY Graduate Center (1983). He has been active in the civil rights and peace movements since the 1960s when he was chairman of the Young People's Socialist League at Florida State University and also worked for CORE in voter registration in north Florida (Leon County). He has written for many online publications such as People's World and Political Affairs where he was an associate editor. He also served on the board of the Bertrand Russell Society and was president of the Corliss Lamont chapter in New York City of the American Humanist Association. He is the author of Reading the Classical Texts of Marxism.

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8 Comments

6/29/2022 02:59:03 am

The only place for FGM (carried out without informed consent, save for odd cases such as that of Fuambai Ahmadu, an anthropologist and feminist who chose clitoridectomy as an adult) in a world freed from the dictates of capital and culture will be at the museum of antiquities. Engels showed that the suppression of women had its origin in the rise of private property. Marx saw sex work as ’only a specific expression of the general prostitution of the labourer’ (Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, 1844). Rosa Luxemburg and Sylvia Pankhurst shared the socialist vision of Engels and Marx: ‘The mass of the proletariat must do more than stake out clearly the aims and direction of the revolution. It must also personally, by its own activity, bring socialism step by step into life’ (Rosa Luxemburg, What Does the Spartacus League Want? 1918). ‘Our aim is Communism. Communism is not an affair of party. It is a theory of life and social organisation. It is a life in which property is held in common; in which the community produces, by conscious aim, sufficient to supply the needs of all its members; in which there is no trading, money, wages, or any direct reward for services rendered’ (Sylvia Pankhurst, What is behind the label? A plea for clearness, 1923).

Female genital mutilation, misogyny, prostitution, virginity tests, being taught that menstruation is unclean, circumcision for non-medical reasons, caste/class, homophobia, marriage to children, as well as blasphemy as a crime, non-evidence based medicine & cock and dog fighting - all of them should be thrown in the dustbin of history! Yet there are many who wish to keep us chained to the past, including cultural relativists, feminists such as Germaine Greer and of course the odd white man!

Charles Brown

6/30/2022 07:46:10 am

OVERVIEW OF ANTHROPOLOGY ; WHAT IS ANTHROPOLOGY ABOUT ?

By Professor Charles D. Brown , Esq.

Wayne County Community College’s Ant 152 introduces students to the four classical branches of anthropology.

Physical anthropology discovers the truth of the biological theory and facts of human

evolutionary origins and human physical diversity. Archaeology and

ethnology explore the development of culture through the Truly Civilized Stone Age

and so-called Civilization, examining artifacts, material culture,

fossil remains , etc. and examining theories about modes of production

from cooperative/egalitarian foraging and horticulture to

large scale domestication of plants and animals with private property, greed, economic

classes , the state male supremacy . Ethnology or Socio-cultural anthropology

, also gives an understanding of diverse customs , traditions; and

religions , economic classes, nations and race in the present historical

era of capitalism and globalism. Linguistic anthropology investigates

language or symbolic communication , like culture, an exclusive human capacity enabling us to

share knowledge and experience with people remote from us in time and space;

and like culture , shaping our worldviews and perception and

interpretation of events.

Anthropology is the study of human beings in all times and place;

study that is historical , systematic and objective, that is to say scientific,

based on logical consideration and testing of material evidence, and natural theories ;

from 100's of thousands of years ago to the present; from Detroit to

the other ends of the Earth. This is in contrast with understanding humans

based on whims, superstition, untested intuition , uncritical faith

or unquestioned authority or supernatural beings. It is an understanding of human societies

and individuals biologically and historically, that is as they have

changed and developed ,evolved ,over time and many generations of individual selves. It seeks to be truly holistic in

approach and scope , looking for the _whole_ truth, nothing but the truth. It welcomes contributions to its understanding of

people from all the other academic disciplines, natural sciences,

social sciences and humanities. It even considers respectfully and

sympathetically systems of thought and belief from cultures very

different than our own. In fact , learning the culture or customs,

beliefs , ideas, religions of foreign and other peoples is the

original focus of anthropology in contrast to sociology, psychology

and history , the other social sciences , and literature and the arts, which focus on Western and European

society's ways of being. In this regard , it is important to be honest

and confess that anthropology and ethnology was often a "handmaiden"

of European colonialism and imperialism, especially in its beginning.

Anthropology and ethnology has significantly , though not completely, overthrown that legacy today

and, predominantly champions the interests of the foreign peoples who

are the main subjects of its study. Also, many anthropologists today

study American and European culture, with applied anthropology to

practical problems "at home" a major section of the discipline today.

There is a sense in which sociology is the anthropology of capitalist societies .

Anthropology's special contribution to scientific understanding

of humanity is the concept of _culture_, or the symbolic nature of human communication and social organization v. Culture is behavior ruled by a mental system of

shared customs, traditions, values, ideas and material products of a

particular group of people. Culture and language , or symbolic communication , are unique and

exclusive characteristics of human beings, the species Homo sapiens . No other animal species has

them, despite the exaggerated claims of some primatologists for chimps and gorillas. Culture and language provided the human species with an

enormous adaptive and Darwinian selective advantage in the tens of

thousands of years that the human species came to be and inhabit the

whole globe, again to a greater extent than any other phylum Chordata species. This

is because it made humans extremely socially interconnected both with

living other humans so that human labor and methods of physical

survival are very _social_, not individualistic; and perhaps more

importantly, socially connected to dead generations of the species

through , again, language and culture, as in ancestor "worship" ,

myths, legends, stories, customs, historical accounts of past generations'

experiences. Two heads are better than one in the struggles for

survival and snuggles for reproduction By sharing the experiences , discoveries, knowledge of many

generations past and those of fellow living people, humans had and

have a big Darwinian or natural selective advantage especially in the

stone age in prehistoric times over the course of 100'

6/30/2022 08:08:03 am

WHAT IS ANTHROPOLOGY ABOUT ?

Our textbook_The Essence of Anthropology_, at page defines Anthropology as the study of

humankind in all times and places, systematically and objectively,

a very good definition. More candidly anthropologists believe that we have a profound

understanding of the truth about human societies and Individuals biologically,

historically and scientifically. There is but one science, the science

of history. Anthropology is the life science of human beings; the

natural and cultural history of the species Homo sapiens.

Studying "all" of something , the whole or

holistically, systematically and objectively is scientific study and

knowledge , because the truth must be the whole truth. So, to say anthropology is open to evidence of human

endeavor from wherever it might be is to declare anthropology has a

scientific approach to knowledge of the truth.

Following the motto of the poet

Terrance: Nothing human is alien to anthropology , so to speak.

Originally , anthropology specialized among the academic disciplines

in studying human beings in times and places remote from the present

and the West, traveling far in time and space , expanding the

representative quality and quantity of the sample of the social

sciences, such as they were , of evidence on human activity and behavior , bodily motion..

Anthropology aimed in part to expand the sample of data Western

academe had on humans in a scientific endeavor to represent more

fully the whole of humanity , "all" of the object of study, that is

humans in _all_ times and _all_ places, not just the history of Europe - a correct scientific mission.

One main and unique contribution of anthropology in expanding the

sample of human life studied by modern science, including natural

history, is the study of early humans and humans' immediate ancestor

species in the evolutionary origin of the species _homo sapiens_.

This evidence and sample represent at a minimum 200,000 years of human

society and as much as 2.5 million years when the whole of the genus

_homo_ is considered human society, that the human species originates

with _Homo habilis_ and _Homo erectus_.

"_Sapiens_" means "wise" In Latin. Homo sapiens

Homo sapiens (Latin: "wise being" )

What is culture, language or _symbolic_ communication ?

For anthropology, culture, language or symbolic communication are the unique species characteristic of

_Homo sapiens_. In a sense, "culture" is another word for "wisdom",

from the notion that humans are the species _homo wise_. It is

humans socially learned practices, customs, language, traditions,

beliefs, religion, spirituality _passed down through many generations that make us "wise" in so many ways,

certainly clever and winners _as a species_ ( not just as a few "fit"

Individuals) in the struggles and snuggles to survive as a species. That is successful in the Darwinian struggles to increase the species population.

Since the advent about 6,000 years ago of so-called civilization, as you have no doubt heard it referred to a, sometimes it's not so clear how wise

our culture makes us. Therein lies the central drama of the history of

the human species.

Nonetheless, clearly in the Stone Age, our having

culture was a highly adaptive advantage over species that did not have

culture , stone tools or controlling fire made through culture or symbolic or imaginary thinking and communication, etc, raising our species

fitness. This is evidenced by _Homo sapiens_ expanding in population

and therefore migrating to an expanded area of living space across the

earth , out of what is now named Africa to the other continents. Stone Age

foraging and kinship organized societies were the mode of life for

the vast majority of time of human species '

existence, 95% or more.

The first human societies had an extraordinarily high survival need to

be able to rely on each other at levels of solidarity that we cannot

even imagine. The intensity of the network of social connections of a

band of 25 to 100 people living in the ecological food chain location

close to the one described in our textbook _Man the Hunted_ , Chapter 4, would almost constitute a new level of organic organization and

integrity above individual bodies or selves. Ancient kinship/family/culture /symbolic communication systems from around 2.5 million years ago ( the beginning of the Truly Civilized Stone Age were almost

super-organic bodies; the human social group was as a harmonious

multi-individual Body, organism. The Individual human bodies, Selves, were very frail and weak in contrast with the the bodies of the field of

predators they were prey for . The dominance of the food chain

that humans, ultimately reached even in the Stone Age with relatively _frail_ individual bodies. could only be

reached by super-social , super internally-cooperative,

6/30/2022 08:14:52 am

that humans, ultimately reached even in the Stone Age with relatively _frail_ individual bodies. could only be

reached by super-social , super internally-cooperative,

super-intra-species harmonious. This was only possible with symbolic communication both within a living generation and across generations, It is

clear to me that natural selection , in the classical Darwinian sense, elected hominin groups with policies and practices of

of "love thy neighbor as thyself " and "charity" over those that might

have derived principles of "selfishness and greed", if there were any

in the Stone Age before Civilization.

Anthropology demonstrates its holistic/ whole truth, and thereby scientific method

of study by specialization into sub-disciplines of cultural

anthropology, physical or biological anthropology, archaeology and

linguistics. Paleoontological anthropology, study of early and

proto-humans, is something of a combination of biological

anthropology and archaeology. Clearly , the pre-eminent and world

changing natural historian Charles Darwin is an initiator of

paleontological anthropology with his book The Descent of Man, and

Selection in Relation to Sex ( although for some reason anthopology classes to not name Darwin's book as the beginning of physical anthropology; I think it is) By the title to his book, Darwin may

have been signaling a correction to the popular distortions of his

theory which imply that "survival of the toughest warriors" rather

than the "gentlest lovers" are the fittest and selected for naturally.

Or as Antoinette Blackwell, excellent Darwinist theoretician termed it, cooperation and balance was selected for over competition and savage rivalry, beyond a reasonable doubt. ( The Sexes Throughout Nature is a book written by Antoinette Brown Blackwell, published by G. P. Putnam's Sons in 1875. )

Culture is founded in kinship; symbolic communication across generations; progeny care/ancestor "worship"

Please critique and challenge the following statement:

In Darwin's theory of natural selection concerning living beings, the

"struggle" in the struggle for existence, to live, is not between

Individual Selves of the same species to the point of Individual Bodies, somebodies,of the same species killing each other except very rarely. Most of the deaths before passing on genes to the next generation, are due to

failures in struggles with some Individual Body of _another_ species.,

plant and animal, as predator and prey; or struggle against bad

weather, heat exhaustion, sunburn

It is easy to see how some people get a misconception of Darwinian

natural selection because it _is_ posed in most of it prime

formulations with a sort of emphasis on the fact of indirect

"competition" in the sense that for the typical bodily form of a

species to change under Darwin's theory, some members with genes that

change species typical traits must more successfully pass them on than

members with species typical traits over successive generations until

the new trait is universal and the old typical trait is extinct. But

this does not necessarily or even conventionally imply direct physical

conflict between Individuals of the two types but the same species in the day-to-day struggle for existence to survive as Individual Bodies.

This is demonstrated by the famous anthropological micro-evolutionary

study of sickle cell genes on pages 44 to 46 of _The Essence of

Anthropology_. There is no direct physical competition between the people of

the various genotypes with different fitnesses in the different

environments in the study.

It is not an Individual , but a species, a group of the same type who

"evolve", "adapt" or "survive". Individuals must live their individual

life long enough to reproduce for the species to survive. However,

every individual eventually dies. "Survival" of the individual means

living long enough to pass on genes or a geno-type to the future

generations. If mutated genes, changed geno-type, are passed on, there

is a potential unit of evolution between the parent and the offspring.

That is evolution occurs between Individuals of different generations, not in one Individual Self. If the

mutated genotype results in a phenol-typical trait that is adaptive

in some significant way, it may become an evolutionary change by the

species through several individuals.

An Individual organism, Some Body, has an instinct for

self-preservation. This is said to be the first law of nature. This

is an instinct to live as long as possible before the inevitable end,

as all animals are mortal. Every Individual Some Body has a lifetime

or ontogeny in which it is born, develops, exists and dies. The

development of an Individual overtime is not evolution , but ontogeny.

Significantly, the institution of war which arises in human history

with so-called civilization around 6,000 years ago invol

6/30/2022 08:18:16 am

Significantly, the institution of war which arises in human history

with so-called civilization around 6,000 years ago involves human Individuals violating

their natural instinct of self-preservation. Going into battle is to

risk one's individual life for a social value of some type,

nationalism or religion, not the exercise of a non-existent "instinct

of aggression". Humans do not even eat those they kill in war (

joke) , another unnatural aspect. No animal species kills without

the motive of getting food.

6/30/2022 08:22:46 am

http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2022/03/leslie-white-founded-evolutionary.html

6/30/2022 08:26:29 am

http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2021/09/survival-of-nice-and-fertile.html

Kemal R233

7/1/2022 06:55:46 pm

Analizinizden çok etkilendim, profesör, çok teşekkür ederim.