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u/itsallfolklore · 16 pointsr/AskAnthropology

Frazer amassed an incredible amount of information, but his perspective was dominated by a romantic view of the past and his scholarship was removed from the continent, where real progress - together with a fierce debate that Frazer lacked to a large extent - shaped progress in the discipline of folklore studies. I will answer this with two excerpts - a second answer will excerpt an article I wrote that dealt with an observation of Frazer. The following is from my newly-e-published Introduction to Folklore, the beginning of the second chapter dealing with how to study folklore:

For nearly two centuries academics have debated about the best way to study oral tradition. Early folklorists could agree that documentation was critical. Modernization – the transformation of the former agrarian society into an industrial, literate, urban world – was destroying the old ways. Folklorists during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were involved in an increasingly urgent rescue mission, attempting to retrieve information that was quickly disappearing.
The period of emergency recordation of folklore is now all but finished for preindustrial European-based folklore. To a certain extent, however, the need may have been something of an illusion since the folk commonly praise their predecessors as better storytellers, as keepers of a richer tradition, and as more prone to believe in supernatural beings. This way of viewing previous generations may predate modernization. Regardless of the degree to which previous generation had richer, older traditions, collection today focuses on the transformation of old traditions and the birth of new ones. Folklorists who study current traditions examine how they survive and change in a modern, sophisticated world. How to analyze this material, whether old or new, is the subject of the following.

The second generation after Jacob Grimm organized what is called the Finnish Historic Geographic method for the study of the folktale. The recommended process was to collect all possible variants of a folktale type to determine the geographic distribution of variants. The folklorist then sought to determine the history of that tale type. There was an assumption that the folktale spread from a point of origin in a way similar to the ripples in a pond caused by dropping a stone into the water. The circular wave farthest from the point of origin is the oldest while the waves closer to the center are younger. In the same way, folklorists looked for a point of origin somewhere near the center of the folktale’s distribution. The variants farthest from the point of origin were regarded as closest to the original form, while variants at the center were presumably younger.

Folklorists began to have serious questions about this approach beginning in the 1920s. Changes in the philosophical stance of ethnography affected folklore studies. Franz Boas (1858-1942) and Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942) sought to develop scientific methods for the study of humanity. These involved the detailed collection of all cultural attributes followed by a rigorous analysis of the material as it exists today. Boas in particular focused on the geographic distribution of cultural elements including aspects of material culture.

During the early twentieth century, there was a shift in the way people felt humanity could be studied. In the nineteenth century, many scholars believed it was possible to understand aspects of culture and its past intuitively by studying all the available material. There was an assumption that certain basic truths would become apparent while considering history because the past merely echoes fundamental principles of humanity played out repeatedly and ingrained within the minds of all people. This approach fell into disfavor in the twentieth century as more scholars placed value on the scientific method. Intuition had no place with this new generation of positivists, academics who applied scientific method to the study of humanity.
Positivists in the early twentieth century questioned the legitimacy of attempting to understand the history of the folktale. The first critics of the Finnish method still recognized the importance of comprehensively collecting and examining the distribution of a folktale type and there was continued interest in defining the history of oral tradition. This approach emphasized geography more than history. For a positivist, it is best to study the material one can gather first hand in a scientific manner. To delve into the past is a murky process that a positivist sees as filled with subjectivity that cannot be scientifically verified.

u/meriti · 9 pointsr/AskAnthropology

I would really like to read what others have to say! I even decided to look up in the book I use to teach Intro to Anthropology and there's no definition of wealth! Egad! Checked some of the other intro-like textbooks and there's no definition either!


In any case, I am even more interested in the "maximizing utility/fun".

It's been a loooong time since I took a full blown Economics class (we talk about Economics in Anthropology, but always from an anthro perspective).

>The more technology an individual has the more varieties of goods can be consumed and hence welfare would be better

This is assuming then that fun and utility lie within goods (and not just goods but a variety of them). I think this is a troublesome perspective, and centered in modern industrialized notions of an economy.

But, your question takes me to the notion of an "Original Affluent Society" by Marshall Salihns^1 ^2 . He defined affluence as having more than enough of what you need to satisfy your consumption needs (notice how "wealth", a modern notion, is avoided). You create affluence by either:

  1. producing a lot (like Western capitalist society)
    or
  2. desiring little (like many hunter-gatherer societies)

    So, for example, Robert Lee^3 studied the Ju/'hoansi --his study was one of the inspirations for Sahlins' "Original Affluent Society". Lee found that they spent around 20 hours per person per week collecting what they need to consume (food)-far less time than agricultural and industrialist societies (although you can argue that they don't spend as much time in collecting food, but in collecting what they need -money or goods-- to then get food and other foods).

    So, foraging societies use their culture to construct a niche where they desire less, but all they desire is fulfilled, in abundance, by their environment.


    To directly answer your questions:

    >What is the definition of wealth?

    It seems there is an idea that wealth follows the layman notion of having an excess of what is valuable in a society. So a variety of goods, although valuable in US culture, might not be as valuable as in other places. Although, we can talk about how that might be influenced through culture contact --that's for another post!

    >Is a technologically improved society better off than a hunter-gather/primitive one?

    I think this is a loaded question. "Better off" is qualitative and subjective. If you are placing value on the variety of goods and the consumption of goods, then I guess a "technologically improved" society is better off. If you take into consideration the cultural norms that dictate how the society values, then probably they are on the same playing field --each society in their own contexts.


    Disclaimer: Many have critiqued that Lee and others only considered food acquisition as work and did not take into consideration food processing and cooking. From wiki^4:

    >When total time spent on food acquisition, processing, and cooking was added together, the estimate per week was 44.5 hours for men and 40.1 hours for women, but Lee added that this is still less than the total hours spent on work and housework in many modern Western households^5.


    Edit: I think the last paragraph in the first link I provided nails it:

    Assuming poverty as a lack of wealth:

    >The world's most primitive people have few possessions. but they are not poor. Poverty is not a certain small amount of goods, nor is it just a relation between means and ends; above all it is a relation between people. Poverty is a social status. As such it is the invention of civilisation. It has grown with civilisation, at once as an invidious distinction between classes and more importantly as a tributary relation that can render agrarian peasants more susceptible to natural catastrophes than any winter camp of Alaskan Eskimo.
u/anthrowill · 1 pointr/AskAnthropology

Yeah, anthropology definitely has it's hands in pretty much all other disciplines in some form of fashion. Mostly because knowledge production is a fundamental aspect of human life, so anthropologists are interested in it in all its forms.

> To be honest, the thing I'm most worried about is that the social justice approach to ethnography is a little left of where I want to be, but I've spoken with a U of M professor, Erik Mueggler, and he showed me the topics that were accepted from PhD candidates recently, and they all seem to have this element to them. Anthropology seems to be undergoing a penance for its ethnocentric theorizing and homogenizing in the past, but I feel that I fall much more in that vein (hopefully without the ethnocentrism).

I wouldn't call it penance, I would say anthropologists today are deeply concerned with how their work impacts the peoples, communities, and places where they conduct research. Yeah, that's partly a reaction to the early days of anthropology's role as colonialism's handmaiden, but it's also the result of theoretical and methodological shifts that occurred beginning in the 1970s. I don't think anthropology's theorizing historically has been overly ethnocentric, quite the contrary really, at least relative to other social science fields. But having some aspect of social justice in a project makes a lot of sense for most anthropological projects. After all, you have to live there for a year, you get to know people, you come to understand their struggles, and they become your friends. So you want to help them, and that often entails using whatever kinds of power and privilege you have to help improve their lives.

Some projects are more infused with social justice than others. It does not need to be a major component of your research, but you will certainly be asked at some point what positive effects your work has on the people you work with and how you will minimize the possibility that you're exploiting them. For example, I'm a medical anthropologist and most of my research questions are about medicine, knowledge production, and gender/sexuality. I don't have social justice all loaded up in my questions, but I do care about treating patients with respect and doing whatever I can to help them since they give their time to and share their lives with me.

> my main question is can you point me to a good undergrad style overview of current theory a la Max Weber's Basic Sociological Terms?

I highly recommend Richard Perry's "Five Key Concepts in Anthropological Thinking." You can get used copies on Amazon for around 1/3 the price of a new copy (https://www.amazon.com/Five-Key-Concepts-Anthropological-Thinking/dp/0130971405).

You might also check out Lavenda & Schultz "Core Concepts in Cultural Anthropology," which I think is in its 6th edition now. It's a concise and accessible introduction to the field of cultural anthro, including some basic discussion about methods. You might also check out Ottenheimer's "The Anthropology of Language" for a background on linguistic anthro, which seems like something you might be interested in.

u/Telepathetic · 23 pointsr/AskAnthropology

The most widely accepted site so far is Monte Verde, at the southern end of Chile. Its main component is dated to 1,000 years before Clovis and is make up mainly of organic materials such as tent stakes, woven grass, mammoth hide, and food remains. An assembly of archaeologists visited the site (in the 90s I believe) and concluded it was valid. Its only real detractor was Stuart Fiedel (although David Meltzer more recently retracted his acceptance as well). This was a hugely important discovery because it showed that people not only got to the Americas before the opening of the Ice Free Corridor in Canada, but it also showed that people got to the southern end of South America by that time. Because of this site, most archaeologists now acknowledge that the first people to get to the Americas skirted along the west coast by boat down from Alaska.

Here are some other archaeological sites with pretty good pre-Clovis evidence (none are as well accepted as Monte Verde, but they are still likely legit): Meadowcroft Rockshelter PA, Cactus Hill VA, Friedkin TX, Paisely Caves OR.

Here are some that are more iffy and may not be pre-Clovis after all: Topper SC, Calico CA, Pedra Furada - Brazil.

These are just off the top of my head, I haven't even gone into the pre-Clovis butchered mammoth remains found around the Great Lakes and in the Great Plains, and all the other less well known sites in South America. As for the genetic and lingustic evidence, I am an expert in this field and even I have a hard time keeping up with what the latest theory is (probably because I have my head buried in my own dissertation writing). It seems to change every couple months though. I can recommend a few books that provide a general overview of work this field though:

David Meltzer's First Peoples in a New World is a good start. He's pretty much a Clovis-firster, so you'll get a healthy dose of skepticism after reading this book. It's very readable and sums up a lot of the past and present arguments that have been made for pre-Clovis in the Americas.

Then there's Paleoamerican Origins: Beyond Clovis, which is a more scholarly collection of research articles dealing with various topics relating to pre-Clovis research. This book includes sections on skeletal and genetic evidence, but keep in mind more recent research has been done on these topics as well. There's nothing on Paisley Caves or Friedkin in here either, which is sad, but the pre-Clovis components of those sites weren't published until a few years after this book came out.

Then for the heck of it, I might recommend Across Atlantic Ice: The Origin of America's Clovis Culture. This is the book on the Solutrean migration theory, which very few archaeologists accept, but I still think it's worth reading nonetheless. The hypothesis is well put together, and the circumstantial evidence behind it is interesting, so read it with an open but critical mind.

One last thing, in the SAA Archaeological Record, my friend Amber Wheat conducted a survey of archaeologists' opinions on various aspects of the peopling of the Americas. You might find this very interesting if you're trying to find out what the consensus is.

I can provide you with some additional sources for the archaeological sites I listed, as well as more recent research in genetics (I'm not sure about lingusticis, I haven't seen much on that subject lately), but I'm being lazy at the moment. But let me know if this is enough or if you need more, and I'll see what I can dredge up.

u/vladesko · 3 pointsr/AskAnthropology

Sorry for the wait, delivering!

I recently moved, so most of my books are still in boxes. However, I've already unboxed the best ones, so I'll list them here (note that most of them are not written by anthropologists per se, but are good books nonetheless):

  1. Mechademia. Technically, it's not a book (it's a journal), but it's by far the best publication in the area. There are lots of articles on the most diverse subjects, and even reviews of related publications. (If you haven't got JSTOR access, come see us on /r/Scholar!);
  2. Frederik Schodt's Manga! Manga!: The World of Japanese Comics is THE classic on manga. 10/10, will definitely read again. (there's a sequel, Dreamland Japan, but I haven't read this one yet);
  3. Paul Gravett's Manga: Sixty Years of Japanese Comics is a good overview on the history of manga;
  4. Roland Kelts' Japanamerica: How the Japanese Pop Culture has invaded the U.S. is fairly good, specially the chapter on hentai. But beware: it's a little less academic than I would like it to be;
  5. Patrick Galbraith's [The Otaku Encyclopedia: An Insider's Guide to The Subculture of Cool Japan] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Otaku-Encyclopedia-Insiders-Subculture/dp/4770031017/ref=pd_sim_b_6) is an amazing book, a fast read and full of awesomeness. I can't recommend it enough. (He has another book called Otaku Spaces and has recently edited a book about idols, but I have yet to read these two);
  6. Last but not least, Hiroki Azuma's Otaku: Japan Database Animals is an excellent book on otaku culture. Azuma's overwhelming knowledge is well conveyed by the translation, IMO.

    OK, I'll stop here. If you want more recommendations (specially stuff on other languages, like Portuguese, French or Japanese, that I didn't bother listing here), feel free to PM me ;)
u/Nora_Oie · 1 pointr/AskAnthropology

While the results of what anthropologists do (ethnographies, in film and in books) can be studied by anyone, the actual ethics and methodology of the field demand interaction with other anthropologists, in my view. We work directly with humans, usually humans from different cultures than our own, and often involving personal topics.

I would start with David Maybury-Lewis's Millenium series for an overview of what anthropologists study. In that series, each video was made with the active involvement of the people shown. That's true of Napoleon Chagnon's films too (which are probably on youtube or perhaps at your local library).

I'd also recommend Renato Rosaldo's work and that of Philippe Bourgois. Lila Abu-Lughod's work gives a great viewpoint on what it's like to actually do fieldwork.

But one thing I'd do is read up on method. Here's a little pdf on medical anthropology:

https://pcmh.ahrq.gov/sites/default/files/attachments/anthropological-approaches-brief.pdf


Beginner ethnographers usually follow a standard outline, seen in all the little ethnographies. Here's a classic:

https://smile.amazon.com/Zinacantan-Maya-Community-Highlands-Chiapas/dp/0674968255/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1549045585&sr=1-1&keywords=zinacantan

​

I guess I'm encouraging you to try and *do* some anthropology as well as read it. You could even start a subreddit for "amateur ethnography" and do blogs. Many people are keen and important observers of the culture around them. It's harder than it looks to write objectively, sensitively and without bias about one's own culture. I do believe that this kind of writing and analysis is very important (especially given something of a collapse in journalism).

u/Ardonpitt · 26 pointsr/AskAnthropology

Well there are all sorts of tribes that are matrilineal and matrilocal and even to degrees matriarchal. But its kinda a false dichotomy to say that ANY group is fully patriarchal or fully matriarchal. In almost every culture there is a split of power along different lines.

In matrilineal cultures there tends to be a split that women control basically the family, but men act on the behalf outside the home. So women control the home, the tribal activities. But men do the trading (and have control over that), men do the fighting (and have control over that.

A good example would be of the Mosuo. There is a lot of hype in feminist circles about them being Matriarchal but they kinda are missing the nuance for political gain. They are probably the most matriarchal culture out there. This is a pretty good ethnography on them, but I would also suggest reading This. It shows as more economic contact is made the there has been the culture is changing, so they aren't exactly the same as the ethnography put them.

It comes down to how the power is allocated really. I mean if you are in a small tribe where basically home life is the only political life and the mother controls the home then yeah its going to seem matriarchal. But even if that were the same model except most of the activity is outside the home and the men controlled that it is going to seem more patriarchal.

Here is a list of what is typically seen as matrilineal and matrilocal societies. As you will see they are incredibly diverse and cross the world. But matriarchy/patriarchy is something a bit harder to put your fingers on.

u/hankbaumbach · 3 pointsr/AskAnthropology

My apologies if this breaks the rules but I was just reading a great book about this subject that details some of the ideas behind procreation across cultures and time that would be perfect for OP.

The Seeds of Life: From Aristotle to da Vinci, from Sharks' Teeth to Frogs' Pants, the Long and Strange Quest to Discover Where Babies Come From by Edward Dolnick

If linking to amazon is not allowed, please just let me know and I'll link to goodreads or something like that!

u/mildmanneredarmy · 3 pointsr/AskAnthropology

Probably the most obvious person to look at is David Graeber as he's probably the best known self-identified anarchist anthropologist. Aside from him, however, you may also be interested in the work of James C. Scott - specifically his book The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia.

That being aid, I don't remember if Graeber or Scott actually lay out plans for what an anarchist society would look like.

It's also worth noting, I think, that's there's a big difference between a stateless society and an anarchist one, if by the latter we mean one explicitly organized according to anarchist ideas. A lot of anarchists nowadays point to the EZLN as a model for a contemporary stateless society, which is quite understandable. However I don't believe the EZLN actually considers itself to be anarchist, though I think they're sympathetic.

u/RandyMFromSP · 15 pointsr/AskAnthropology

After the Ice is a great resource. Interesting narrative style as well.

The Horse, the Wheel, and Language is also a great (although fairly technical) book about the origin and spread of the Indo-European language which had a large effect on the bronze age cultures in the area.

u/JoeBakerBFC · 11 pointsr/AskAnthropology

The short answer is probably around the beginnings of sedentary life. Eight to twelve thousand years ago depending on where and who you are asking.

A longer answer requires an understanding of inter-generational wealth transfer. Simply put: if you have a certain social status that is dependent of some quantity of capital, any of that capital you expend to raise a child had better be spent on a child you know is yours genetically. In a society that practices honor killings a woman's value relies her her virginity and fertility. Virginity because controlling her sexuality is the sole way for a male to guarantee that his children are his, and fertility to provide her husband with children. (In pre-industrial societies children are economic assets, unlike today, because they can work for you.)

Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead were among the first anthropologists to openly observe that societies with little economic stratification were much more sexually permissive than societies with a great deal of wealth and poverty. A good thought experiment is to consider "The Garden Of Eden": If the environment were such that no one had to do anything other than pick food from the trees to survive, then it wouldn't matter whose children are whose because no one has to put any effort into their survival.

By contrast imagine today's society with no CPS or orphanages ect, and the only way to achieve any material success is to be blood related to someone with a lot of money. Then it matters very much whose children are whose.

Now back to OP's original question: "Honor Killings" killings exist in societies where social status is based on economic inequality, and where any kind of wealth transfer requires some kind of blood relation. These societies couldn't have existed before the development of some kind of agriculture/aquaculture which was between 8,000 to 12,000 years ago depending on where and who you ask.

u/zoweee · 9 pointsr/AskAnthropology

This is well towards the end of and past the period you're asking about, but I really enjoyed After the Ice: A Global Human History 20,000 - 5,000BC. It's got this interesting narrative conceit where the author conjures the spirit of a 19th century paleoanthropologist and sends him around the world to various human habitations, so the viewer sees them through his eyes and what would otherwise be a dry survey of archeological digs becomes more like a story being told by a knowledgable person. The goal is to describe how the world changed during the last great phase of human pre-history and created the conditions necessary to propel humans into civilization. One part that sticks in my head is from very early on and its how he moves from a group that live in seemingly idyllic conditions in the levant (IIRC) to another group suffering through a harsh Ice Age winter, huddled together and all with their backs to a fierce wind. The difference in mobility and group-size really stuck with me.

u/zhgarfield · 16 pointsr/AskAnthropology

In general, the concept of communal property is pervasive among egalitarian societies. Most mobile foragers or hunter-gatherers are or were egalitarian, as are many horticultural societies. However, there's a lot of variation. Typically there are complex social leveling mechanisms in place that prevent any individual from collecting too much wealth (including material and social). For example, when a hunter gets a kill, depending on the tool and method used and present company, there may be different culturally proscribed methods for distribution. Egalitarianism, putatively characterized the majority of human evolution but is hardly representative of all human culture. Robert Kelly's new edition of The Foraging Spectrum provides a nice review. Also, Boehm's Hierarchy in the Forest is a good introduction to theories on egalitarianism.

u/EventListener · 3 pointsr/AskAnthropology

These two ethnographies are easy/pleasant reads, frequently used in undergraduate courses:

u/CaptainRallie · 5 pointsr/AskAnthropology

The Na people of China are the only group I've read about that don't practice marriage.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1890951137?pc_redir=1398108671&robot_redir=1

There are, however, places in which marriage practices bear little if any resemblance to what you might think of as marriage.

The Nandi for example have a really interesting tradition of female husbands.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nandi_people

u/DJWalnut · 1 pointr/AskAnthropology

In Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman anthropologist Marjorie Shostak describes that it is common for !Kung marred men and women to "take lovers" and have extramarital sex, albiet clandisnedly.

I read the book for a cultural anthropology class and was able to geturn the book afterwards for a full refund, so I no longer have it to cite page numbers, but I recall that there's an entire chapter on the subject.

u/multinillionaire · 28 pointsr/AskAnthropology

James S Scott speculates that this is actually very common. His main case study is Southeast Asia, where there is a lot of evidence of people fleeing heavily agricultural civilizations for a horticultural life in the highlands both as a result of conflict and simply because the life of the latter is freer and (at least in many ways) richer as compared to the heavily-taxed life of an agricultural serf in a stratified society. Of course, horticulture might not be rice paddy cultivation but it's still agriculture. Nonetheless, he finds signs that this is a worldwide dynamic that shows up where ever you have a geographic or temporal transition between densely settled agriculture and a lower-density space that makes "less civilized" lifeways possible. One space he keeps coming back to is the Eastern/Midwestern US of the 1500s and 1600s, when the post Columbian contact plagues and their associated population collapses gave the survivors plenty of elbow room to make this transition.

u/Chrythes · 3 pointsr/AskAnthropology

I would suggest The Lifeways of Hunter-Gatherers: The Foraging Spectrum. It is very comprehensive, informative, and readable.

u/cmhamill · 3 pointsr/AskAnthropology

This is probably the best for getting an anthropological view on it: http://amzn.com/0300169175

You may want to look into the history of the Paris Commune and the Spanish Civil War.